A Woman Well-Reputed
by Mercury Gray
Summary: Testing the waters of her interest in Charles Blake, Mary accepts an invitation to his cousin Sir Severus' house for a shooting weekend, and gets more than she bargained for making new acquaintances, and putting past love affairs to rest. Mary, Evelyn, Charles, and others.
1. Act 1, Scene 1: Friday Afternoon

I find it interesting that of the nearly five thousand fanfics currently in the Downton fandom on this site, only fifty or so concern themselves with the doings of Mary's Men. Perhaps that is because we will never forgive Matthew for dying, or that as a whole, the fandom likes to concentrate its energies on other stories the show does not cover – well and good. Regardless, we write what we would like to read, and this is what I like – a little longer, a little more period, more than a brief glimpse into the life of Downton. More will follow – we have a whole weekend to cover.

I wrote the story with the idea of it being more Team Mary than anything else – exploring her a bit as a person and what her needs and wants are before also exploring who will best fulfill those. I also wanted to know more (or create more, really) about Charles Blake, in light of his interesting socio-political situation, being an heir in Northern Ireland. I'm not sure that this is really a 'ship' kind of story, (though my bias on the subject is pretty clear) and have chosen not to label it as such.

I know my view is not a popular one, but I hope my reasons for thinking so are well explained throughout.

I also hope you enjoy reading it.

* * *

**A Woman Well-Reputed**

Testing the waters of her interest in Charles Blake, Mary accepts an invitation to his cousin Sir Severus' house for a shooting weekend, and gets more than she bargained for making new acquaintances, and putting past love affairs to rest. Mary, Evelyn, Charles, and others.

_I grant I am a woman; but withal  
A woman that Lord Brutus took to wife:  
I grant I am a woman; but withal  
A woman well-reputed, Cato's daughter.  
Think you I am no stronger than my sex,  
Being so father'd and so husbanded?_

_-_Portia, Act 2, Scene 1, Julius Caesar

* * *

_Act 1, Scene 1: Autumn, 1923._

Even from a hundred miles away he managed to make her sound like a snob.

_You'll forgive us, I hope, if it doesn't live up to Downton, but my uncle hasn't entertained like this since before the war. _

The mysterious Sir Severus, it seemed, had been talked around to hosting a house party, and Charles had written to Mary, asking her to come. It was to be a shooting weekend – _Just neighbors, in the main, no one too posh, but Evelyn's promised to come, too, and he's bringing a friend of his from his Army days_, and since "someone" had told him how much Mary loved to ride (That was probably Evelyn) and was a "sportswoman of some repute in Yorkshire" (Evelyn again, damn him.) he thought she might enjoy the proceedings.

_My uncle's not a very sociable person, _Charles wrote_, apart from his Army friends, and I don't think Hilda and Lillian quite thought through who they were going to invite when they tried to talk Uncle into giving a party, so I've been asked to try and get a few younger people who aren't terribly dull and can tolerate a bit of jazz in the evening. Since many of my friends are from the Ministry, this first condition is rather a high order._

Mary had to allow herself a laugh at that – hadn't it been her assumption that Charles wasn't witty? But it was like him to be a little self deprecating. On acquaintance he could be a very fair conversationalist, a compliment she wasn't sure she could extend to everyone in government work.

It seemed so strange, to be thought of as 'the younger set' for the purposes of a party. Mary hadn't thought of herself as 'the younger set' since before the war. Were widows in general entitled to think of themselves as young? Mary supposed there were a great many of them, after four years of fighting, young women who had scarcely had time to think of themselves as married before finding out their husbands were dead.

But whatever else went along with widowhood, it also rendered her respectable – and above reproach for accepting the invitation of a single man to go and visit his family home for the weekend.

"Really, Mama, I don't know what you think is going to happen," Mary said when she'd first broached the subject of going to Ireland. "I have it on good authority all the revolutionaries have gone home now that they've got Home Rule. And anyway, we're out in the country, not in the back-end streets of Belfast."

"I wasn't thinking about bombs, Mary, I was thinking about your reputation." Cora made this sound as though a slight to Mary's good name was a good deal more catastrophic than a silly little thing like social unrest.

Mary resisted the urge to roll her eyes at her mother and sighed. "If he were concerned about what people thought about it he wouldn't have invited me. And there won't be anyone there to scandalize – it'll be his cousins, his aunt, Evelyn and some army friend, and some of Sir Severus's stuffy old neighbors. I rather get the feeling I'm being invited to make sure there's a female around to keep his cousins from being bored stiff."

"And how will you get to – what did you say it was called again?"

"Clonfinard. I'm taking the train to Liverpool, and we'll catch an overnight express steamer to Belfast. Charles is sending someone with a car to fetch us from the port."

"Seems like a long way to go for a shooting weekend."

"But not a long way for a friend," Mary countered evenly. Her mother couldn't argue with that, and so the matter had been considered closed. Mary hadn't shared Tony's startling news with her mother, that Clonfinard was one of the largest estates in the North of Ireland and was entailed lock, stock, and barrel to Charles when Sir Severus died. Somehow it didn't seem fair to Charles, when he'd said he wanted to 'win her on his own,' and she knew that her mother would take every opportunity to throw them together after she learned of his impending fortune. No, it was better to let this go naturally. Let her mother come to whatever conclusions she came to regarding Charles' suitability for her on her own and tell her about the money later.

It had been a long time since Mary had gone anywhere besides London, a longer time still since she'd done much in the way of country weekends, and there was a seemingly endless list of things to prepare – riding habits to be let out, or redone in the new style (was it appropriate for women to merely wear breeches, and ride astride now that skirts had gone high, or did one still wear the skirt and go side-saddle?) and boots to be gotten off of their trees and polished, luggage to be retrieved from the attic and the season's colors to be reviewed (Was this dress too bright for country sports? Too showy for the evening? Would they need to bring the tiara, or would diamond clips suffice? Was it in bad taste to be too in fashion the further you were away from London?)

She would take Anna, of course, that was not even a question. Mary rather doubted Lady Blake or the Misses Blakes had a competent maid between them, and it really didn't matter who was coming for the weekend - she wasn't going to be caught out trying to dress her own hair for dinner. (Results would have been disastrous. Not, she supposed with a brief smile, that Charles would have minded that.)

It amounted to a surprisingly short trip, given the amount of planning that had gone into it. The train to Liverpool was uneventful, and they waited a mere two hours before boarding their steamer to Belfast. One went to dinner, went to sleep, and then woke up to find oneself practically on the other side of the Irish Sea. There was breakfast, a bit of time to dive into a book, a walk around the boat deck, and then they were there. It was all very predictable and true to form, and once Anna had located their luggage, Mary was quite prepared to sit and wait near the customs office for someone from Sir Severus' house to show up with the car.

However, she had barely had enough time to walk out of the Port Authority offices when she heard someone shout her name.

"Don't tell me you drove all this way yourself!" Mary said in surprise, watching Charles jump away from his perch against the side of a very sporty looking Talbot.

"It's a splendid day for driving," Charles defended, giving her the polite peck on the cheek reserved for maiden aunts and friends who have seen each other at their very worst. "And anyway, I didn't want you to think I'd short-changed you somehow by sending someone else to pick you up."

"How gallant of you," Mary replied. "But I don't see how we're going to fit my luggage into your little roadster there," she said, gesturing to the diminutive sports car. "And I have Anna with me as well," she added, though Anna herself made a solid enough presence next to the luggage. She, too, was eyeing the car with some distaste, probably because, as her employer had already observed, this was a two-person vehicle – and a very cozy two people at that.

"My uncle's chauffeur followed me down with the house car," he said, pointing to the eminently more respectable looking sedan sitting fifty meters down the road, accompanied by its uniformed driver, a salt-and-peppered gentleman with an almost military bearing. "Have you so little regard for my planning skills? My aunt was kind enough to remind me before I left that ladies of rank never travel without a three ring circus' worth of luggage before I reminded her that I'd already asked Barnard." He nodded in the direction of the sedan. "So he can take Anna, and the luggage, and I can take you." He opened the Talbot's door and gestured inside with an almost theatrical flourish. "Don't worry, he won't lose a thing," he added impishly. "I know how highly you value Anna."

Mary glanced back at Anna, who smiled reassuringly. "Have a nice ride, my lady." And, implicit with that, the unspoken addendum: _I don't think your mother needs to hear about this later from me._ Mary considered this and, with a brief conspiratorial smile at her maid, stepped into the Talbot and allowed Blake to start the car and send them off running.

"Was it a pleasant crossing?" he asked politely after they'd cleared the city limits (quite a feat in itself, considering the mixture of horse-drawn drays, buses, and hordes of pedestrians) and could finally hear themselves talk over the loud purr of the motor.

"I slept soundly enough, if that's what you're asking," Mary replied, watching the countryside fly by.

"One of the many benefits of overnight steam travel," Charles remarked with a smile. "Go to sleep, and find yourself in a new place altogether. If only it were that easy to get everywhere."

"Some people call that dreaming, Charles," Mary said pointedly, returning her gaze to the undulant hills over the car's hood ornament.

It was a pleasant drive, far pleasanter than some Mary had been on in Yorkshire; they met only one or two other motorists, each one honking cheerily in greeting as they passed. After a while, the usual pleasantries of conversation had lapsed into a comfortable silence, leaving Mary to enjoy the view as the car sped along. So often, a room without conversation was seen as a trying, terrible thing, but a car-ride with only the wind and the wild birds for ambiance seemed a kind of Eden.

She knew they were getting close when Charles started pointing out local landmarks. It was surprising, at least to Mary, to watch him become so animated over a village, or a farmhouse, or even a stand of trees, and to hear him relate the local history with such relish – how this church had been here since the reformation, and this crossroads had a charming local story about how it got its name. Charles, who loved to be thought of as a modern with no sentimental ties to the way things had always been, was secretly a bit of a sentimentalist when it came to his own home ground.

"There have always been woods around, but the coppice here was planted in the early eighteen-hundreds by the first Baronet. The story goes that he didn't want his neighbors to be able to see into his windows at night while they were entertaining," Charles said, suddenly turning off the road onto what was clearly a private drive, heading through the woods and passing an open wrought-iron gate. A few more easy turns, meant, clearly, to ease the passage of the last generation's four-in-hand carriages rather than the current one's four-cylinders, finally brought them up to an allée of birch trees, trunks white against the greens of the lawn and the ashy-gray of the house beyond them.

As they neared the house, the shade of the allée finally opened up, revealing an expanse of Neoclassical villa, wings stretching wide around a graveled front ground punctuated by a small garden near the house's front door.

The house-parties of Mary's debutante days contained many memories of many such entrances, the servants lined up near the door to greet guests, the house's master and mistress present to give an even more formal welcome. Now in the age of the motorcar, where everyone's coming and going happened in the blink of an eye, many houses had dispensed with the formal welcome, though Mary could just make out two frenetic figures at the top of the house steps, waving madly.

"Well, here we are. And I think the welcoming party has spotted us," Charles said with a smile, turning into the driveway and parking the car at the base of the steps as the two girls descended, radiant with smiles.

"You said you'd be back hours ago!" the younger one exclaimed, throwing her arms around Charles without any regard for propriety. "Is this her?"

"Slow down, Hilly, we don't want to be thought unsophisticated," Charles said lightly, giving enough of a hint to the girls that their behavior was not quite up to snuff yet. The enthusiasm subsided a bit, enough for Mary to collect herself so Charles could make introductions. "Lady Mary, allow me to introduce you to Hilda and Lillian Blake, my cousins. Girls, this is Lady Mary Crawley, the daughter of the Earl of Grantham."

"How do you do?" the girls asked, very nearly in unison, which made Mary smile.

"Very well, thank you."

"Did cousin Charles make you take the long way around? He does that sometimes, to show visitors the farms and all his projects. I hope he wasn't too boring."

"Hilly!" Lillian, the older one at seventeen or so, looked scandalized at twelve year old Hilda's quip. Charles, deep in conversation with the footman who had just emerged to take the car around to the coachhouse, offered no defense. But Mary took it in stride.

"We took what I imagine to be the short way in, and it was not boring in the slightest," Mary said, utterly truthful. "He didn't lecture once."

This seemed to reassure the girls. "We're ever so excited you're here! Papa's friends all came up this morning and they haven't done anything except sit in the smoking room discussing politics," Hilly confided. "But now that you and Mr. Napier's friend are here we can have all kinds of fun!"

The car's care successfully remanded, Blake returned his attentions to the group of girls. "Hilly, why don't you go inside and see where Mrs. Booth has placed Lady Mary? Her things will be arriving soon with her maid, and she'll need to know where to go," Charles suggested, letting Hilly run off in search of the housekeeper.

"I'm ever so sorry about Hilly," Lillian said after her sister had run out of earshot. "Sometimes she's just…" The older girl's voice trailed off into uncertainty, clearly more than a little distressed by the unorthodox welcome afforded by her sister.

"I have two younger sisters myself," Mary sympathized, which garnered a look of relief from the teenager.

Lillian turned to go inside, and then, pausing, turned back. "We _are_ very glad you're here," she repeated, and then took the stairs two at a time into the house.

Mary turned back to Charles to find him smiling widely. "What are you smiling about?" she asked, genuinely curious.

"They've been over the moon for the last week about your coming," Charles said, leading her up the stairs to the front door. "They may have made you over into a bit of a fairy princess, to tell you the truth."

"I suppose I have you and some over-rosy remembrances to thank for that," Mary added with an accusatory smile. Charles did not answer, but his own guilty grin served well enough for a reply. "They seem like very nice girls."

"They are. Hilly does run a bit wild and annoys her sister to no end, as I understand sisters do, but they're very sweet, at the end of the day. Even to their cousin who is taking their home away from them," Blake added regretfully.

"Entailments are tricky like that," Mary acknowledged, remembering another distant, estate-grabbing cousin with a fond smile. Charles' face fell.

"I'm sorry, I'd forgotten –"

"Never mind that, it's done now," Mary said quickly, wanting to move on to other things. No amount of reverie was going to bring him back. "Tell me more about this mysterious friend of Evelyn's. Are we all going to spend the weekend suffering through another load of war stories, or is it to be off-color college tales?"

At this, Charles smiled mysteriously. "Now that you mention it, I wonder why they're not here. They arrived before luncheon, and I sent them off for a ride around the park before I left. I thought for sure they'd have returned by now." He squinted down the wide green expanse of parkland off the house's east wing and finally pointed out a pair of figures in the distance, both coming in at a tidy gallop.

"So he's a rider. How nice to know we'll have something to fall back on for conversation," Mary said.

"Well, I wouldn't put it quite like that," Charles admitted, waving his hat to the two approaching figures and making them alter their course towards the front of the house. _Whatever does that mean?_ Mary wondered to herself. "Ahoy there! We were beginning to wonder what happened to you. What did you think of the Outer Bound?" he called down, stepping smartly back down the steps to meet the riders as they came to a stop. Mary followed, her view of the riders obscured so that she heard voices before she could see faces.

"I hope your steeplechase has a few more jumps in it, Sir Charles. I like my rides to be a little bit more challenging than Lincoln Park on a Sunday afternoon."

It was a voice that was undeniably American – and _female._ Mary finished her descent of the steps to come face to face with both Evelyn and a young woman of perhaps her own age, garbed for a leisurely ride – _astride, _Mary was interested to note - in a soft tweed coat and forest-green bowler hat, both riders dismounting to greet Charles and the newly arrived Mary, who was still in shock. Evelyn's promised friend, _a woman_? But Charles had said – yes, Charles had said _from Army days_, not _from the Army_, which mean that this woman could be _anyone_.

Mary rather doubted the new arrival could be anyone, well, _unsuitable_, but in this day and age it was becoming harder and harder to tell.

She glanced at Charles, and saw, infuriatingly, that he was smiling at her surprise. Did he take special pleasure in putting her out of her element? Evelyn, to his credit, hadn't seemed to have noticed.

"Lady Mary, allow me to introduce Miss Virginia Sibley. Virginia, this is Lady Mary Crawley, from Downton Abbey, in Yorkshire."

"An American," Mary observed, trying (and, to be honest about it, failing) not to sound judgmental.

"Miss Sibley is from Chicago," Evelyn said as the two women shook hands somewhat awkwardly, Virginia shifting her crop and riding gloves to one hand.

"A pleasure to finally meet you, Lady Mary. Evelyn's told me so much about you." The woman's voice was even and cultured – as cultured as it was possible to sound with that Midwestern accent mixed in - and her handshake was firm.

"All good stories, I hope," Mary managed to say.

"The very best," Virginia said with a smile. "You'll be, ah, joining us for dinner, I imagine?"

"Oh yes," Mary said, smiling icily and wondering what sort of world this Virginia Sibley lived in that a guest for a houseparty would not join the party for dinner on the day she arrived. Virginia smiled and steered her horse in the direction of the stables, followed closely by Evelyn, the two of them bent in close conversation. She watched them round the corner of the house and heard laughter.

When they were out of earshot, Mary turned on Charles. "You might have said!" she accused, scowling at little at him as Charles tried to (somewhat unsuccessfully) hide a smile.

"It isn't often that I get to see you at a loss," Charles admitted playfully. "The temptation was too much to pass up."

Mary tried not to let this bother her too much, and soldiered on. "And how does Evelyn know her?"

"That I could not say. She was visiting London this past week, they ran into each other, and he asked if he could bring her along. After that, I know nothing about her except that she is very friendly, and a very capable horsewoman. My aunt was glad to have her; we were going to be short a woman anyway. Hilly and Lilly are mad to meet her. Americans in this part of the world are rather rare birds."

"Isn't your aunt afraid she'll tip over all your teatables and start waving flags?"

"Isn't your mother American?" Charles countered in surprise.

"I try to forget that as often as I can," Mary said archly, making Charles smile. "Hilly was concerned that you'd taken me the long way around while we were coming in to tell me about your experiments. Do you test all your theories here as well as in other people's homes?"

"I believe the best advice is the voice of experience," Blake said stoutly. "_Would_ you like to come down and see my pigs after dinner? Berkshires, Middle Whites, Tamworths, of course, and a few Gloustershire Old Spots out in pasturage, for variety. I can promise you will not end the evening covered in mud," He added, just to see her take his bait and smile.

"What makes you think I wouldn't enjoy a bit of mud? Really, Charles, you underestimate me."

They had reached the top of the steps, and the open front door; Charles let Mary lead the way inside, nodding his silent greeting to the black-suited butler standing by.

Clonfinard was one of those stately Adam homes, built at the height of English privilege in Ireland, designed to impress and belittle anyone entering its doors. Not for this home the cosy oak-paneled hall and Turkey carpets that greeted visitors to Downton; Clonfinard offered instead a palatial expanse of echoing marble, enfiladed by columns leading the visitor's eye down the length of the room to a pair of sweeping staircases up to a second floor gallery. Here and there a piece of sculpture peeked from behind the pillars. Mary's shoes suddenly seemed very loud.

The silence of the hall didn't stay for long – a woman's voice could be heard coming from the upstairs gallery, moving quickly towards them.

"…and when you've spoken with Mrs. Morrow, you should have Timothy check on his lordship's guests. I can't imagine what they've been doing all afternoon in – Charles!" The speaker finally reached the main gallery and peered over the top of the railing – a middle-aged and rather attractive dark-haired woman, conservatively dressed in skirt and cardigan, sleeves pushed to the elbows. "Hilly was beginning to think you'd gotten lost." She descended the stairs in a flurry of quick, efficient steps, stopping to kiss Charles on the cheek with the air of a pleased mother.

"Don't worry, we assured her that all's well. Aunt Julia, this is Lady Mary Crawley. Mary, allow me to introduce my aunt, Lady Blake."

"How do you do?" Julia Blake asked, shaking hands with Mary with a welcoming smile. "You'll have to forgive our irregularity, Lady Mary – I'm afraid my husband is rather a poor host, and is wrapped up with his friends in the study at present. He is not used to entertaining outside of the occasional informal shoot."

"Perfectly understandable," Mary said with a smile, even if it wasn't. It was highly irregular, not having the host out to greet his guests for the weekend – but then, Charles greeting her at the Port should have told her that there wasn't a lot about this weekend that was going to be 'regular.'

"Charles has been telling us all about your house in Yorkshire, Lady Mary. I'm sure he's told you my daughters are very excited to meet you as well."

"Yes, we met on the porch coming in. Very darling girls."

"Very much a handful, you mean," Julia said with a knowledgeable smile. "You can be honest with me, Lady Mary. Trust that I know my own children. Charles says you have a son of your own," she prompted, seeming genuinely interested in hearing more about the child, and not just asking out of a desire to make polite conversation.

"George, yes. He's just turned two." For a moment Mary's heart was back at Downton, in the nursery. But there was no room for babies at house parties, even so charming a baby as George.

"They are a treasure when they're that age," Lady Blake said fondly, her gaze harkening back to the halcyon days of her children's youth. "I'm not sure when they lose the allure. Let Mrs. Booth take your coat, here, and I'll show you into the drawing room. Mrs. Booth, has the tea gone in yet?"

The housekeeper, a spare, efficient looking woman who had followed Lady Blake down the stairs, nodded. "Yes, ma'am, for the FitzGeralds and Lord and Lady MacInnis. Lord Westicott telephoned for you while you were out, Mr. Charles. He said to tell you he had some trouble with his car, but that he was at a mechanic's having it looked at and that he shouldn't be delayed too long."

"Thank you, Mrs. Booth. Mr. Napier and Miss Sibley are just back from their ride, they should be coming in any moment," Charles added, handing over his hat and his overcoat, and stepping over to help Mary with her own coat, leaving her hat for when Anna could help her out of it without ruining her hair.

"Bless us, they _have_ been out all afternoon," Lady Blake realized. "They'll want to change before coming in for tea, Mrs. Booth - Can you see that Miss Sibley makes it up to her room? I think she's a bit overwhelmed by the house."

"I'll have Carew meet them in the hall with the bootjacks, my lady, and tell John to bring in more teacups."

"Thank you, Mrs. Booth, that will be splendid. Charles, will you take care of introducing everyone?" Out of the corner of her eye Mary saw Charles nod. Orders finished, Lady Blake disappeared behind one of the colonnades, opening a door and letting the low buzz of polite afternoon conversation leak out into the forecourt.

Charles exchanged a glance with Mary and held out his arm in the direction of the drawing room. "So, shall we to the lion's den?"

_The lion's den,_ Mary repeated silently with a smile. "Are you frightened of drawing room conversation as a general rule, Charles? I thought that was just at Downton," she asked, teasing him just a little.

"No, only when the drawing room has my aunt's friends in it," Charles responded, nearing the door and pausing to let Mary peek inside a much less formal room than the hall they were leaving. "So, the woman near the window talking to my aunt is Lady MacInnis – her husband's here as well, his father was in the army with my uncle, and…well, I think it's best we go inside, you can't see anyone else from here."

The drawing room was a much more welcome space, the ceiling lower and the colors warmer. Two women, along with Mrs. Blake, surrounded the tea table in the center of the room, while a taller, darker gentleman gazed out one of the large picture windows overlooking the side of the house and a second, younger gentleman lounged, rather carelessly, in the corner of the room, leg almost hooked over the arm of his chair.

"Charles, is that you? How beastly of you not to have been here when we arrived," a very fashionable peroxide blonde drawled from the circle around the teatable, sitting up languidly in her seat to survey the newcomers. "Didn't I say so, Carroll?"

"Beastly," the younger gentleman with the rakish angle in the armchair echoed lazily, not looking up from his book.

"I didn't know what time you'd be coming, Christabel, or I'd have been sure to be here," Charles said, turning to glance at Mary with a slightly forced smile, a look Mary knew all too well from his early days at Downton. "Do you know Lady Mary Crawley?" he asked, trying his best to be pleasant as he and Mary moved further into the room.

"I don't think we've had the pleasure," the blonde Christabel said, her voice all fashionable purr.

"Lady Mary, this is Christabel FitzGerald, of Kenwick Park, very near here. Her brother Carroll is the gentleman in the corner."

"Charmed," the gentleman in the corner drawled distantly, still engrossed in his book. (Mary noticed, too, that his socks, peeking out from his pantlegs, were mis-matched, both of them luridly patterned in a different colored argyle.)

"How do you do, Lady Mary?" Christabel said, her eyes making a quick study of Mary's hat, dress, and shoes before meeting Mary's gaze again with an approving sniff.

"Very well, thank you," Mary responded, not sure whether to be offended or surprised that the young woman, in addition to not rising from her seat on the settee, had also not held out her hand to shake.

"I'm not sure you know Lady MacInnis, either, or Lord MacInnis," Charles said, bravely soldiering on.

"Pleased to meet you, Lady Mary," Lady MacInnis, a slight woman with dark marceled hair and what she hoped was a warm smile, held out one delicately gloved hand in greeting as Mary sat down on the other end of the same couch. Lord MacInnis glanced away from the window for a moment, caught Mary's eye, and nodded in silent acknowledgement.

"Pleased to meet you as well, Lady MacInnis."

"Lady Mary and I met at her father's estate in Yorkshire during our last Ministry Survey," Charles said, sitting down and accepting a cup of tea from his aunt.

"How perfectly dreadful," Christabel FitzGerald pronounced. "I still can't believe you invade people's homes to criticize their management, Charles, it's a wonder you get invited anywhere."

"We were glad to have the advice," Mary said loyally, with her 'best guest' smile fixed firmly in place. She made a mental note to ask Charles what, exactly, Christabel FitzGerald's role in Clonfinard society was.

"And did Charles pronounce you … fighting fit?" Lady MacInnis inquired brightly.

"After a few improvements, yes," Mary admitted, taking her own cup of tea from Lady Blake and smiling in silent thanks. "Time marches on and so must we."

"Charles was telling us that Downton has been one of his most successful sites yet," Lady Blake put in, sensing, as her nephew did, that there was going to be little love lost between Mary and Christabel. "Has your father the Earl taken to the idea of the pigs yet?"

The deliberate mention of Mary's father 'the Earl' seemed to take some of the wind out of Christabel's sails; at any rate, she sat up a little straighter on the settee, took a delicate sip of her cooling tea, and made no further snide comment. "Now that they're at the farm there's not much he can do," Mary admitted. "But my brother-in-law Tom and I are sure to walk him down there whenever we have the opportunity, to help push the point home."

"And are there any other improvements on the horizon?" Lady Blake asked.

"My late husband was a great advocate for several different building projects – new cottages, mending walls and so forth, which we may start soon."

"Surely that will be a great expense," Lady MacInnis observed, getting a sudden, hawkish glance from her husband, who until this point had been staring broodily out the window. _What was that about?_ Mary wondered, busying herself with the sugar tongs for a moment and trying to look like she hadn't noticed Lady MacInnis' obvious discomfort.

"We will create jobs and short-term training for the upcoming class of skilled workers, improve the fabric of the estate, and create better living and working conditions for our tenants in doing so," Mary explained. "The county will profit in the short term, and we shall see gains in the longer term with increased rents and increased productivity. Who else besides us will spend the money to do any of those things? It seems a sensible course, no matter the cost."

"Yes, of course," Lady MacInnis agreed, suddenly making herself very interested in the nearest plate of biscuits.

"Carroll, weren't you saying something about your father building new cottages at Kenwick?" Lady Blake asked, trying to draw the younger man into the conversation.

As Carroll looked up and turned his general disinterest to the people in the room rather than the book he was reading, Mary took a moment to take stock of her fellow party-goers.

Christabel and Carroll FitzGerald, both 'The Honorables', of Kenwick Park, both no older than twenty six or so, both habitually disinterested in everything the room had to offer, both very smartly dressed, except for Carroll's mismatched argyle socks, which Mary supposed to be some half-hearted nod to bohemianism, or whatever it was they were calling it these days. Why were they even here, if everything bored them so completely? Mary's mind flashed back to Christabel's greeting, the kittenish smile she'd lavished upon Charles and the cold glare she'd flashed at Mary. Had she be called home to husband-hunt, with her brother as a chaperone? Compared to Lady MacInnis and Lady Blake, Christabel's style was daringly modern – perhaps she spent more time in town than out in the country. Her ensemble had probably cost a great deal, and it didn't seem at all like she took an interest in where her allowance was coming from, for she had nothing to add to Carroll's comments about his father's building projects.

Then Lady MacInnis, whose dress was at least two years out of fashion but very well made, and whose husband had jumped at the talk of money. In fact, Lord MacInnis' gaze had not left the window except for that moment when he'd thought to rein in his wife. It was the sort of look, Mary realized, that her father got, looking out the windows at Downton, a mixture of resignation and nostalgia, remembering better days when his place in the world seemed more secure. _Perhaps that's not a happy household, then._

It was the first time, also, that she'd seen Charles in his native habitat, seen among his people as he had always seen her among hers. Not for this drawing room, though, the cool, confident civil servant who said what he meant and did not 'pull his punches', who knew his business and went about it brazenly, nor the smiling, comfortable presence of the National Gallery, or the Grantham House ballroom, who played the lover with such a hopeful, tentative charm, afraid of being thought too bold. Of the practical, sensible farmer who slopped pigs and threw mud and joked there was no sign whatever, and in place of all these faces was one Mary had never seen before – a man lurking in the background of the drama and judiciously watching all the other players. He had not sat down, and was standing with a watchful eye behind the couch where his Aunt and Christabel were sitting – perhaps to keep out of Miss FitzGerald's line of sight?

If out of Miss FitzGerald's view, then also inside Mary's - she caught his eye as it patrolled the room one more time, and smiled reassuringly. He smiled back, and Mary, for a moment, caught a fleeting glimpse of the man she'd known at Downton, happy, and at his ease.

The quiet moment, however, did not last. The butler, Carew, opened the door to announce another arrival. "Lord Westicott, my lady."

At the name Westicott, Charles' safe, somber expression vanished, and Mary's eye, like his, was drawn towards the drawing room's newest occupant, a young man of about thirty with rather disheveled hair, a suit that had clearly been of some expense but was now looking a little worn around the edges, and the kind of rakish good looks that had been getting girls into trouble at houseparties like this for generations on end.

Lady Blake, however, seemed just as pleased to see him – so pleased that she rose to greet him near the door, receiving a kiss on the cheek for her troubles. Another family member, perhaps? But not in that suit, surely. "Duff, my dear, we were afraid that the worst had happened when we got your call."

"You're wonderfully kind to worry, Lady Blake. I had the good misfortune to break down on a sunny day less than a mile from a telephone. It is awfully kind of you to invite me for the weekend - my mother sends her thanks for keeping me out of trouble."

"You must remember to call whenever you have a need to get out into the country again," Lady Blake said. "It must be so tiring, sitting at a desk in the Exchange all day."

"You're kind to offer, but I think you'd be rather sick of me after a while," Westicott said, smiling ruefully. "So who all is here?"

Lady Blake made a quick scan of the room. "I think you know Lord MacInnis, Lady MacInnis, Carroll FitzGerald, Christabel FitzGerald –"

"Got you out into the country for the weekend, did they, Christabel?" Duff asked pleasantly, eyeing the blond with antagonism in his voice.

"Daddy couldn't get away, and he didn't want to let the side down, so Carroll's shooting in his place," Miss FitzGerald said, smiling poisonously at the new arrival. _That's no love lost between them_, _then,_ Mary observed with well-hidden amusement, glad to know she wasn't alone in disliking the younger woman. But Duff was not wasting any time scanning the room on his own, and when he found Charles standing behind the couch, his face broke out into an irrepressible grin.

"Charlie! How's the old Talbot treating you – still suffering along?" Westicott moved in the direction of his host, effectively placing himself out of Christabel's line of fire.

"Still suffering," Charles said, reaching out a hand for the very hearty shake exchanged between friends who go back a long ways. "Whatever was the matter with your car?" he asked in a more confidential tone as the conversation in the room shifted back to the lines it had been running along before Lord Westicott had arrived.

"Damn thing nearly threw an axel over a pothole," Westicott confessed. "I've got to see the county board about the state of these roads - it's really absurd. How can we claim to be living in a civilized society when every road from here to Londonderry's full of holes large enough to hide a horse? Thankfully it limped to the next village over, and they happened to have a telephone. Rang for a ride and left the thing there so I could fly over here and rescue whatever hapless damsel you've pulled into your evil clutches for the weekend." Duff did another quick survey of the room until his eyes came to rest on Mary, who rose from her seat and came to stand closer to the two men, away from the tea-table and whatever doubtlessly interesting subject they'd embark on next.

"Hapless is not a word I'd use. Duff, this is Lady Mary Crawley, of Downton Abbey, in Yorkshire. Lady Mary, allow me to introduce you to Lord Westicott."

"But you'll call me Duff," Westicott said, shaking hands with the conspiratorial assurance of a man who knows he is considered good looking. "I hope Charles didn't bore you all the way from the train station about his farming schemes. We're not all that provincial on this side of the Sea."

"First Hilly and now you - Does everyone think that is the only subject I talk about?" Charles wondered with mock horror.

"Well, you do tend to prattle on about it a bit," Duff accused.

"I don't think I could find his farming schemes boring, Lord Westicott. Charles was kind enough to assess my family estate when he was in Yorkshire last summer."

"Lady Mary takes a keen interest in the subject of management," Charles added, almost proudly.

"Beautiful _**and**_ brainy." Westicott sounded impressed. "Where do you find them, Charlie?" 'Charlie' shrugged and tried to look very casual about it. "And it's Duff, please. I trust you're looking forward to this weekend, Lady Mary?"

"Very much. The company promises to be… very diverting." Mary's gaze drew back to the tea-table with slightly disguised distaste.

"Ah, yes, speaking of company, I was promised there'd be a ravishing American running around," Duff said, surveying the room. "Where have you hidden her, Charlie, or will I have to make you a liar in front of all these good people?"

Blake frowned, but Carew, however, was going to intervene again. "Mr. Napier and Miss Sibley, my lady."

Gone were the muddy hunters home from the hill of earlier, and in their place stood two smartly dressed young people – or rather, one smartly dressed young English gentleman and, as promised, one ravishing American. And she was ravishing. Hands clasped gracefully in front of the deep pockets of her tuxedo sweater, Virginia Sibley looked the very idea of young and sporty, and even Carroll FitzGerald had sat up in his chair and taken notice. _Probably because she looks like she's borrowed her brother's clothes,_ Mary observed disapprovingly. It was a very masculine ensemble, down to the loose college tie and collared shirt. Call her old fashioned, but this sudden vogue for women dressing like men was not something Mary felt she could ever get behind.

"Hel-lo," Duff whispered eagerly, looking as though he might well have whistled if this were a streetcorner and not a drawing room.

"There's your American for you, Duff, but I have it on good authority she's spoken for," Charles murmured triumphantly, watching his friend's inordinately pleased expression as Lady Blake introduced the two new arrivals around the tea-table.

Mary watched the tableau at the middle of the room – Miss FitzGerald, Miss Sibley, Lady MacInnis, Miss Sibley, charmed, how do you do, nice weather we're having – with vague interest, and then, suddenly, out of the corner of her eye, saw something she hadn't seen when Evelyn and Virginia had ridden up, something that made her sit up and follow the scene with intense interest to make sure she hadn't gotten it wrong. No, there it was again! There was a distinct look in Evelyn's eyes, a protective interest that followed Virginia's every movement in around the tea-things and once, when she was sure Evelyn wasn't even aware of it, made his hand reach up to hold the small of her back, pausing before it reached the fabric of her sweater and dropping back down shamefully to its owner's side.

Could it be – no, no, it couldn't possibly. Evelyn, be romantically interested in …this American? From Chicago, the abattoir of America? What was wrong with him?

To say that she had a claim on Evelyn would be only fleetingly true. For ten years they'd danced around the idea of marriage, stopping only for the brief period that Mary had had Matthew. So much dancing, in fact, that in the process he'd almost become one of the family, like a brother who only dropped in from time to time, beloved by her parents, respected by her sister, and, when it came to it, depended on by Mary. So long that it simply seemed a fact of life, a part of the background, that he should always be there, admiring her, and she would always be there to be admired. Evelyn had been true north – dependable and truthful. If he was there, then the world was spinning as it should.

But True North must be a lonely place, especially for ten years – even Mary had to admit to that. He'd probably weighed his chances after Tony and Charles, and had thrown his hat in a different direction. All the same, it made her feel jealous, and angry, and resplendently selfish after all that. Who was she, to monopolize a man she wouldn't marry?

But _Chicago_!? Were things that desperate?

"Introductions! Evelyn, Lord Eldon Westicott, a very old friend of mine from school. Duff, this is Evelyn Napier, one of my colleagues at the Ministry, and Virginia Sibley, an acquaintance of his from Chicago."

"Enchantée," Duff said, making the same charming smile at the American as he had just done for Mary, and catching Miss Sibley's hand to kiss it. This amused rather than charmed Miss Sibley, because she gave a laugh rather than the pretty girlish giggle Duff had doubtless been expecting.

"Pleased to meet you, Lord Westicott. Or is it Lord Eldon?"

_Well, she's not completely provincial. We can give her that much,_ Mary grudged.

"Lord Westicott, but for you, it's Duff."

"Duff, then," Virginia said, still smiling in that amused and confused manner, glancing at Charles as if to see if this was, indeed, entirely appropriate.

"Charlie tells me you took the long way in today and saw the grounds from horseback. Quite an adventure."

"Mr. Blake tells correctly. I must thank you, again, for the loan of your hunter, Mr. Blake – a very fine animal."

"I was glad you had a pleasant time. I'm very often in London and the horses don't get the use they should, apart from the odd daily jaunt here and there with the grooms. They probably enjoyed it just as much as you did."

"How did you find our grounds today, Miss Sibley?" Lady Blake asked, turning in her seat to glance over the back of the settee.

"It was breathtaking, Lady Blake," Virginia said, smiling with genuine gratitude. "You have a lovely home. And it was most kind of you to accommodate a last-minute addition."

"We are very happy you decided to come," Lady Blake assured her. "Although, you must know you may have to work for your keep while you're here – I am sure Charles warned you when you arrived that my daughters are both very excited to meet you."

"I will try to be as entertaining as possible when I finally do meet them," The American assured her hostess.

Lady Blake turned her attention back to her nephew. "Charles, do you think Miss Sibley and Lady Mary would like a walk around the garden before dinner?"

Charles glanced at Mary, who didn't really care one way or the other, and then at Virginia, who looked encouraging of the idea. "Why not?" he said, shrugging broadly. "Evelyn, you're welcome to come, too, if you'd like; I don't think you've ever seen the place. Christabel? Carroll?" The FitzGeralds collectively shook their heads, and Christabel's fixed _hauteur_ even gave way to a look of mild revulsion.

"I'll come," Duff said, stepping forward into the circle of conversation again. "I could use a bit of a stroll before dinner."

"After the afternoon you've had?" Charles sounded a little doubtful, but there was a hasty exchange of strange secretive expressions between the two men and nothing more was made of the subject. "So, what's it to be – gardens, greens, or woods?"

The Abbey could, in any good company, easily admit to being a large house – Clonfinard, by comparison, was palatial. Virginia, at least, played the tourist with ease, nodding and smiling and asking all the right questions as the group strolled back out through the front hall, down a corridor and through another drawing room with doors opening up to the back of the house and the wide meadows beyond. Charles and Virginia led the way, with Evelyn following in close pursuit, leaving Duff to fall into step with Mary at the back of the group as Charles lead the way between a collection of beautifully cropped boxwoods.

"You look rather bored, Lady Mary," Duff observed wryly, glancing sideways. "We haven't even made it out to the birch-wood. It's where the house gets its name from, you know – and it's absolutely wonderful now, in autumn, with the color."

"If you've seen one garden, Lord Westicott…" Mary began, let the sentence drop with a knowledgeable smile. "I only agreed with the idea to be polite."

"Yes, that is rather the case, isn't it?" the young man agreed. "But one likes to put one's best foot forward for guests. It is an impressive park, if you like that kind of thing. Perfect for showing off to visiting dignitaries – or the daughters of earls." He glanced again at Mary, and, seeing her polite surprise, gave a little shrug. "Charlie hasn't stopped talking about you since he met you, Lady Mary. I wasn't going to meet you without looking your family up in Debrett's first."

_So men do that, too,_ Mary thought to herself. "And am I found suitable?" she asked with a slim smile.

"Oh, eminently," Duff announced grandly, ticking off notes on his fingers as they walked. "Daughter of the Earl of Grantham, widow of Matthew Crawley, esquire, mother of George Crawley, heiress to extensive property, society beauty, farm manageress extraordinaire – I'm rather surprised you're even considering Charlie, Lady Mary; you could do much better than him."

_Ah, if only you knew_. "You take an interesting approach to salesmanship, Lord Westicott," Mary observed with wry amusement. "I thought men were supposed to promote their friends to lady admirers, not put them off."

"No, that comes later. Right now I'm trying to ferret out your interest. And it's Duff, please," Westicott put in again.

"How am I doing on that score, Duff?" Mary asked, seeing no reason to continue fighting for the use of a proper name. Lord Eldon really didn't suit the man, either, which helped a little.

"Well, you've already defended him once, so I'd say we're off to a brilliant start," Duff acknowledged with pleasure. "I say, Charles, you're going to bore Miss Sibley to death, which I cannot stand for. I don't think she came to Ireland to hear you preach a sermon on Capability Brown, or Robert Adam follies."

The threesome of Charles, Evelyn and Virginia had pulled ahead by a few lengths as Duff and Mary had been talking, and Duff had to shout a little to make himself heard. They stopped walking and waited for the pair to catch up, Charles looking a little sheepish that he had been caught lecturing again.

"I'll take full fault," Virginia said with a smile. "I asked him to tell me more about it. You must save your censure for another day. You don't mind, if we walk all the way out there? It seems so pretty, with the leaves changing."

"You're absolutely right," Duff declared. "Would be a shame to let you miss it. But you can't let Charlie wear your ear off. He'll keep you all to himself, given half a chance, and that's not very sporting either. He can't have all the lovely women to himself, even if we are at his house."

Charles rolled his eyes and sighed, putting up his hands in a gesture of surrender and taking a step back while Virginia looked on with bemusement, evidently not used to being fought over.

"We could have pushed for Christabel to come, if you're really that lonesome, Duff," the host reminded, probably only to see the look of horror on his friend's face as he suggested it.

"And spend the whole walk listening to a ticker-tape of London fashion and gossip? That'd be worse than your remarks on landscaping. Even I have standards, Charlie, if they are lower than yours. Besides, you know Christabel and I don't get on. Haven't since we were children," he confided to Virginia, who nodded as though she were intimately aware of the complications of such affairs.

"Have you known the FitzGeralds a long time, then?" Evelyn asked, emerging from the background of the scene as polite as ever. It always surprised Mary how obliging and pleasant Evelyn could be, even in the worst circumstances – even when the woman he had brought with him was content to be walking with their host, and not him. Yet he didn't seem concerned about it, at least from where Mary was standing. _Because Charles has his sights on me? Or because he trusts Miss Sibley not to desert him?_

"Long enough to have formed an intense and unyielding dislike," Duff stated frankly. "Society in Ireland is a little less varied than in England – we all go to the same balls, the same parties, the same horse races. There's not a lot that can be done in the way of avoiding people you dislike, so the dislike grows. And in the case of Christabel, it's been growing between us for years."

"She does seem like an - acquired taste," Virginia said diplomatically.

Duff grinned. "That's quite a phrase for it! Wherever did you find her, Mr. Napier?"

"France," Evelyn said cryptically, exchanging glances with Virginia with a secretive smile that she seemed more than happy to return.

Duff, at least, was happy enough ignoring such things. "And what brought you to Europe at this time of year, Miss Sibley? Business or pleasure?"

"A little of both. I was on the Continent for an article I'm writing," Virginia said as the group resumed their walk, more or less as a cohesive group.

"Ah, a journalist! How exciting," Duff exclaimed. "You'd better take my arm here, Miss Sibley, the ground's a bit uneven," he said suddenly, offering one arm with old-fashioned gallantry. Was he feigning interest, or genuinely enthralled with the idea? Having known several journalists, her sister among them, Mary couldn't pretend to be excited about a career with the popular press. If anything, it made her dislike the woman more. _I still don't understand why she's here – and what Evelyn sees in her. She seems rather common to me._

"It is, rather," the American admitted, smiling a little self-consciously as she took Westicott's arm and Duff, predictably, wrapped his hand around her own as if to steady her. Mary resisted the urge to snort at such an obvious ploy and took the opportunity to watch her own footing.

"And what's the article about?" Charles asked, playing the polite host.

"The impact of the war on everyday life overseas," Virginia said, garnering a few raised eyebrows for her trouble. "It's a human interest piece, really nothing important. I wrote a series of them, during the war, the price of food and clothing shortages and collection drives and the like. My editor liked them, my readers liked them, so I'm back to see what it's all like five years on."

"What are you finding?" Westicott asked, still the soul of solicitous interest.

The American shrugged, unsure where to begin. "The rich are still rich, the poor are still poor. I think there's a greater sense of discontent now. People expect wars to be fought to change things, and I think this one was to keep the status quo - except that no one told that to the men fighting. Now everyone is home, and the soldiers want to know where their promised 'home for heroes' is. I know it's the same in Chicago - no jobs, few prospects, prices going up on everything. France has it worse - it's nearly impossible to get a meal worth writing about there. In Paris you see veterans in the streets begging, with their medals and campaign ribbons out, for all the good it does them. I think people are tired of thinking about it, and they'd like to move on, but can't." She paused to smile at Duff and extricate her arm from his. "I think I can manage now, thank you, Duff."

"The north of France is a mess," Evelyn concurred."The farms are full of shell holes and shot, and the men who are still alive to work them are either too few or too tired or simply not physically able. That, at, least, is not the case with most of Britain. If our farmers are tired, it's not because they're fishing five-nines out of their drainage ditches."

"I'd forgotten you'd been in France recently," Mary remarked, just to assure the party she had been listening.

Napier nodded. "The Ministry wanted to see what progress is being made on production from their end. In that measure we are ahead of them, but not by much. We have men and equipment, and farms large enough to make it worth the bother of getting them started again, which is not the case in parts of Northern France. The war reminded us how dependent we were on foreign imports, and now we must work to change that."

"The challenges of small islands," Virginia mused aloud, her eyes fixed on some distant point.

"The title for your next article, Miss Sibley?" Charles asked.

The American chuckled and shook her head. "I leave economics to other columnists and their political opinion pieces. But it would make a good title."

"Will this weekend make it into an article as well?" Mary asked, a little abrasive.

"Perhaps Country Life would take a picture-piece on the lost grandeur of the English Country House weekend, but not the readers of the Chicago Triumph," Virginia chuckled, and then, remembering herself, asked with circumspection, "It is still an _English_ weekend, isn't it, even if we are in Ireland?"

Mary tried not to laugh and succeeded, more or less, but Charles took the question quite seriously. "The less openly speculated about that the better. My uncle is very firmly Unionist, and considers himself British before he is Irish, despite having lived his entire life here. O'Connell's comments on Wellington with regard to horses and stables might be said to apply."

They finally reached the promised folly, a little temple emerging bashfully from the autumnal birch-forest behind it, and Charles held out his arm to permit Virginia to be the first one up the steps to admire the view. She ascended the steps herself, followed closely by Evelyn and Duff, leaving Mary at the bottom of the steps. Charles looked back at her, smiled in his odd way, and offered her his arm, which Mary took with little-hidden satisfaction.

Looking back from the slight advantage of the portico, the view of Clonfinard was, as Virginia had described it earlier, breathtaking. Not without reason was Ireland 'The Emerald Isle' – a feast of green and yellow looked back at them in the afternoon sunshine from every direction – the foliage, the lawn, the hedges of the formal garden, the ivy trailing hopefully up the stable block. It was a garden paradise.

"And you, Mr. Blake? What do you consider yourself?" Virginia trained her view on the host while the rest of the party took in the scenery.

"I'm English, but not for the sake of the Union. My father was an Irish younger son who made his way in the Army, but I grew up in England with an English mother, went to English schools and learned an English way of life before I found out when I was about sixteen or so that I was going to inherit all of this."

"What a lot for a sixteen year old to take in," Virginia mused. "You must have been terrified."

"For you it might be," Mary commented derisively, not bothering to meet Virginia's eyes and fixing her gaze on the house's outbuildings and stable block, now somewhat within view from their elevated vantage point. "Men who are born to this way of life are never overwhelmed by it. I'm sure Charles didn't find it that way."

Charles, ever the polite host, pretended not to have heard. "I was a little scared, I admit. But it does grow into a person. And at the end of it, I still say that I come with a different view of land and great houses than, say, Christabel FitzGerald. When I first visited Clonfinard Sir Severus took me and Dad around, introduced me to all the tenants, showed me the fields and the pasturage and the mines and the mills. I didn't see the wealth of it - I just saw people. People who needed jobs, who needed stable incomes, who wanted to see all of this continue. And I didn't want it to just continue - I wanted to see it succeed. I do what I do for them."

"And how does Christabel FitzGerald see things?" Virginia asked, her voice much softer than it had been previously. Mary looked from Charles to the American several times before she realized – she was _interviewing_ him. The soft voice, the careful, mindful look, it was all in pursuit of a story. And Charles was giving it to her, whether he knew it or not.

"Christabel and Carroll have always known luxury. They've grown up as absentees, more often in town than in the country. They don't know where their money comes from, and they don't care, as long as their allowances come and their bills get paid. And while they stay away in town, Kenwick Hall crumbles and their father grinds on."

"You've really got a way of making us eldest sons who let the side down sound like terrible people, Charlie," Duff said from the background, sounding forlorn.

Charles looked at his friend with objection shining bright in his eyes. "That wasn't your fault, Duff. No one should be responsible for their reprobate parents."

"My family estate was sold after the war," Duff offered for the benefit of Mary and Evelyn, who were all trying to look as though they'd gone politely deaf. Virginia looked sympathetic, but then, Americans were always talking about money. It didn't bother them as much as it did the English. "Dad's debts, mainly, after his death-duties were paid. Making me something of a yellow Lord." Looking around at the confused looks, he explained, "In the Navy, a man who has been promoted to the rank of admiral but has no actual command to is said to have been 'yellowed'. So now I may still hoist a pennant as Lord Westicott but I have lost the ship that should go with it," Duff related sadly, scuffing at a loose leaf on the pavement with the tip of his shoe.

"But you have not lost your conversation," Virginia said, patting his arm in consolation. "My cousin used to say that it was the man who couldn't sell himself who was the poorest man in the marketplace."

"Good advice," Charles agreed, before Mary could even think of snorting in contempt. Trust the self-made men of the middle American continent to come up with such a ridiculous idea. It wouldn't work in England, at any rate. She could think of dozens of men in her acquaintance who could speak eloquently and elegantly about themselves but who hadn't a scrap of income or skill between them. Words didn't keep men employed, and Duff Westicott's fine manners and gallant ways weren't keeping the proper shine on his shoes.

"You'll have to come to Chicago," Virginia was saying, "And we'll find a rich American princess with an empire in railroads or steel or salt or something who won't mind being Lady Westicott."

"That might be rather a hard sell - princesses always think they need a castle. She'll have to be Lady Westicott in a small apartment off of Threadneedle Street at the moment."

"All the best people in Chicago have apartments these days. Now, tell me on the way back what is it that a stockbroker does. We have an exchange in Chicago and I confess I still don't know what they do there."

They set off down the steps, arm in arm, Evelyn following behind again, leaving Charles and Mary to bring up the rearguard.

"That's how you saw Downton. Not knowing where the money came from."

Charles grimaced and dropped his gaze. "Yes, it was. But that's not the case anymore, if it was ever true at all to begin with. You and I have seen to that."

"Was what Duff said true? About his father?"

"Yes." Charles looked grim at the prospect. "He sent his son to school on gambling money and took him away just as quick with gambling debts - Duff almost didn't take his degree, until some aunt of his stepped in and made sure he could finish the term."

Mary considered the man ahead with renewed interest. "He seems like a very interesting man." She said truthfully.

"He is - he plays at being a bit of a rogue, but his heart's in the right place. I've known him since we were about twelve, so he knows all my secrets. I'm sure he'll even tell you some of them."

"Not a very trustworthy friend, then."

"For a pretty face, Duff will do just about anything," Charles admitted ruefully, watching his friend make the visiting American laugh again.

"I hope I'm not just a pretty face," Mary replied with a hurt tone.

Charles sighed and smiled. "No, you are much, much more than that. And much more than simply pretty," he added for effect.

Mary stopped mid-stride and studied him. "Is that a compliment, Mr. Blake?"

"What, is a man not allowed to give compliments?" Charles asked, still smiling.

"I am not obliged to accept them without suspicion," she said archly, just to watch him roll his eyes at her.

"Suspect what you like - it is true," Charles maintained gallantly as they resumed their walk.

"Come on, you two, or you'll make us late!" Duff called merrily from the bottom of the steps back up to the terrace outside the drawing room. "Plenty of time for sweet words behind the hedgerows after dinner!"

Mary blushed and Charles ducked his head in embarrassment, but both did as they were told, quickening their walk back to the house to change.

* * *

So, the players have all made their way to the stage (except for Sir Severus and the rest of the 'guns', whom we will meet next time) and the action can commence!

Thoughts, comments, concerns (and rotten cabbages, if you feel you must) all accepted gratefully and graciously.


	2. Act 1, Scene 2: Friday Evening

_Thanks to everyone who read and reviewed the first chapter! _

_I would like it known that I spent a whole week trying to accurately seat the dinner party in this chapter. I even went so far as to write a blog post about the experience._

_In other words, I hope this chapter gives you as much entertainment as it gave me grief._

* * *

_**A Woman Well-Reputed**_

_Act 1, Scene 2: Friday Evening_

Carew was waiting for them at the top of the steps when they returned, evidently to remind everyone of their room assignments, should anyone have forgotten. Mary was in the Orchard Room, one of the state bedrooms overlooking the back of the house and so named, Charles told her, because Sir Severus' mother had found herself with a collection of furniture carved with fruit and nowhere to put it otherwise. Mary, however, couldn't care less about the late Lady Blake's taste in furniture; what she wanted now was a rest, a change of clothes, and a chance to talk with Anna about the rest of the house guests.

"Did you have a pleasant walk, my lady?" Anna asked, smoothing Mary's dress for that night on its hanger one last time as her mistress made her way inside and closed the door behind herself.

"It wasn't unpleasant, but I've had better," Mary responded. "It gets tiresome, having to talk with people you don't know on the first night of a party. But never mind that. Did you have a pleasant drive in? I hope we've left you a chance to get settled."

"We arrived in better time than you did, my Lady. I think Mr. Blake took the long way home," Anna said with a smile. "He did seem excited to get you alone for the hour."

"That is about the limit of quiet conversation at house parties. We've been surrounded by other people since we got here. How are things downstairs - are they treating you well?"

"Oh, very well, my lady. Carson would be happy to hear that I am Crawley here, not Bates. Mr. Carew, the butler, seems cut from the same cloth. He was in service to some retired fleet admiral for many years, so there's a vaguely nautical flair downstairs, references to bells and such."

"Oh my," Mary said, settling in at the dressing table and inspecting her hairdo.

"I don't mind it. Mrs. Booth's a bit cross, but she knows her business. The maids were having a tiff about who'd dress Lady MacInnis for dinner, and she soon put paid to it. She hasn't got a maid anymore, apparently - doesn't want it put about."

"No maid?" _I shouldn't be surprised._

"Let go, they said. The talk in the servant's hall is that Lord MacInnis has had to sell property recently - a good deal of property. They've had to cut all kinds of expense. His valet's still with them, though."

"That explains him - he jumped every time someone alluded to money. How do you find Miss FitzGerald's maid?"

"Very French, my lady. She was very keen on 'my lady's frock' this and 'my lady's hat' that. She didn't seem to want to have much to do with the rest of us - it's put out some noses downstairs, I can tell you."

_Well, that fits her, too_. Mary nodded sagely. "Everyone likes a bit of a change during the weekend - I'm sure a new pretty face helps ease the work-load."

"Speaking of pretty faces, my lady, the American's caused quite a stir," Anna reported with her usual cheerful smile. "They were after her maid for all kinds of details about her."

"Miss Sibley brought a maid?" Mary asked, incredulous.

"Oh yes, my lady, a girl from Sussex. She's been with her for years, apparently, since before the war. Very nice girl. She was telling them all about some round-the-world trip Miss Sibley had just taken for her newspaper. She sounds like quite the adventuress."

"She's a journalist," Mary said, recalling with some distaste the excitement in Duff Westicott's face as he'd made that discovery. "Although I didn't think she'd afford a lady's maid on that kind of income."

"Maybe her family has money," Anna speculated with a soft shrug.

"Perhaps," Mary concurred, trying to quiet her accumulating ire and failing. "It's bound to be from something vulgar and we'll hear all about it at dinner."

The lady's maid wisely decided not to respond to that remark. "And Mr. Napier's here as well," Anna said off-handedly. "His valet remembered me, from his stay at Downton with Mr. Blake. He was pleased when he heard you were staying."

"Really." Mary didn't know what to make of that.

"Although I understand that Mr. Napier is the one who invited Miss Sibley," Anna said, watching Mary very closely in the mirror to see her reaction. _She doesn't miss a thing, does she_, Mary thought to herself, trying to arrange her face into some expression that didn't make her look displeased with the situation. She liked to have some secrets, after all. What business of hers was it who Mr. Napier brought along to other people's house parties?

"Yes, that's right. She's a...a friend of his." Mary didn't want to dwell on this overlong. "Did her maid say anything about how they met?"

Anna shook her head. "I don't think anyone asked, my lady. I only heard the maid say that Miss Sibley had been in Paris, for an article she was writing about the war, and then she and Mr. Napier had dinner after a chance-meeting somewhere, and then they met again in London, and they've been very thick since then."

Mary murmured in response.

"Mr. Napier's valet was saying that he would have liked the chance to stay at Downton again," Anna commented off-handedly.

Mary looked up at Anna in the mirror with sudden interest. "And what did you say to that?"

"I said I didn't write the guest lists," her maid said diplomatically. Mary relaxed a bit. "But it had me remembering-"

"Remembering what?" Mary's voice couldn't help being sharp.

It was too late for Anna to back-track now, and she struggled for a moment to find the words. "Just remembering what high hopes your mother had for him."

Mary allowed herself a vague smile. High hopes indeed. And it hadn't just been her mother.

_Well, it's nothing to me. I have bigger fish to fry. Are we talking about E.N.? Come on, who is he? It's not fair if you both know. The Honourable Evelyn Napier, son and heir to Viscount Branksome. Who wants and old sea monster when they can have Perseus?_

Goodness, that had been a long time ago. Sybil hadn't even been presented when that conversation had taken place. Now Sybil had a child of her own, and a grave, too, alongside millions of other young people gone to God for one reason or another. How that had been a different world, before the war. Hats were still large and the pinnacle of her days would have been to marry and arrange flowers and seating plans. Did young women these days still make classical allusions when talking of their beaux? Was the word beaux even still in? It had been almost out in her debutante days, still used only because no one had come up with a better one.

Well, the sea-monster had turned out to be a dragon of a different kind, and Perseus, seeing he was no longer needed, had struck off in search of other adventures, not having lost, really, just bowed out to a better man.

Mary smiled to remember him, her better man. Matthew and Evelyn had only met two or three times, but they seemed to get on well - both men of simple joys and similar tastes. Men who liked to be found useful, who knew the value of a day's work. Evelyn reported being given many a skeptical side-glance at dinner parties after he'd announced he was going to work for the Foreign Office, when everyone knew that Honorables didn't work, not really, unless they were younger Honorables and it was the army, which was considered respectable. Hadn't they given Matthew the same sideglances when he announced that he intended to keep the law and leaving the running of Downton for 'the week-end'?

And, when she thought about it, hadn't they rolled their eyes at Charles, who seemed so at home in his work with the Ministry as to seem middle class? But then, they hadn't known Charles was an heir when they'd first met him.

Now that she considered it, Charles was more like Matthew than she'd realized. He'd fought to keep his job, fought to make sure his rich relations didn't change him. For all the weeks Charles had been at Downton with her mother treating it like a house party and trying to pull him away to this trifle or that, there were an equal number of mornings where Anna had relayed, from the maids downstairs, that Mr. Blake had been up very early that morning, and wasn't he doing a frightful lot of writing up there in his guest room, with all his facts and his figures at hand? Hadn't Matthew done the same, some nights, to the consternation of Mr. Molesley or Mr. Carson or, heaven help them, her father?

She remembered what Charles had said, out at the folly, in answer to Virginia's question about his Englishness. _I didn't see the wealth of it…I wanted to see it succeed._ It had taken much, much more to bring Matthew around to the idea of Downton – but they'd gotten him there, in the end.

She wouldn't have had to convince Evelyn, or Tony Gillingham. But she continued to be drawn to the men who had to be convinced, in some way, that Downton was valuable, that _she_ was valuable. Why? Because she liked the desperation it caused her? The arguing, the petty threats, the simmer of resentment?

Because she liked to know she'd won, really. There was victory in proving another person wrong, and Mary Crawley liked victories. When you'd argued about a thing the answer seemed so much more definitive than when all parties agreed amicably right from the off. You were never sure if everyone meant what they said, or whether it had all been a ploy to avoid unpleasantness. But after an argument – after you were done with the shouting, and the proverbial smoke in the air had cleared- then there was remarkable calm.

_If you like an argument, then we should see more of each other._ Matthew had said that to her, once. She smiled now to remember it. Whatever she knew about Charles, she knew that he was prepared to fight her – fight _with _her, yes, but fight _for_ her, too, if necessary. And that was reassuring, in its way.

She hated to admit it, but she needed her reassurances now more than ever. Matthew's death, like so many other things before it – the Titanic, the War, the estate's troubles – had shaken her deeply, so deeply that there were some days that she didn't know which way was left or right. Was that why she disliked Virginia Sibley so much? Certain things that had always been a comfort to her were slowly falling away, and Evelyn was just one more of them.

She'd accepted Charles' invitation for something to do, obviously, to get away from Downton for a while, but also to make a closer study of him, to see whether they were suited to one another or whether she'd better go back to Gillingham and his easy, heart-on-his-sleeve romance. Perhaps it was better to let the matter of Evelyn rest. It'd be better for both of them, surely, when they'd waited this long about it.

Yes, that was what she'd do. He probably knew it already, but it was good to say these things. And then, perhaps, she could at least try to get him to see that the American was not the best fit. A journalist! What would the papers say?

Finally resolved, she let Anna help her into her dress, the beadwork heavy against her shoulders as a suit of armor.

Mary took one last look in the mirror to inspect herself, adjusted the tilt of her head a few times, and smiled. _Let the American compete with that._

* * *

Mary was neither the first person downstairs, nor the last - Charles, Duff, and Evelyn were all in the drawing room in white ties and tails, as was Lady Blake, diamond clips and all, and Virginia Sibley, who was holding court on the couch with the two Blake girls, answering a steady stream of eager questions about her life on the far shores of America.

"But it's not a silly question," Hilda defended as her elder sister looked on in exasperation at her latest query. "Everyone keeps talking about America like it's the moon."

"I hate to let you down, but it's a lot like London," Virginia said apologetically. "People ride trains and go to work and go shopping and read newspapers. It all just happens to occur in a large American metropolis next to an equally large lake."

"I've never been to London. Mummy says I can't go until I'm older."

"Well, I'd love for you to visit me in Chicago, Miss Hilda," Virginia offered, by way of a consolation prize.

Hilda jumped on this immediately. "Do you? Do you really? Mummy, can I?"

"I think Miss Sibley was only being nice, Hilly, I'm sure she's terribly busy."

"Oh, no, I wouldn't mind at all. Showing off the city to visitors is one of my favorite things to do. We could go to Lincoln Park and visit the Zoo, or we could go to Mr. Field's new museum down by the Lake. And maybe if they've finished it by then, we could go see a football game in the new stadium they're building in Grant Park. Then there's always State Street, for shopping and to go ride the escalators at Marshall Field's, and have lunch in the Palmer House. Or if you wanted we could give you a tour of my office at the newspaper."

"I'd love to see your office!"

"The whole of modern society's charms, and she wants to see the inside of an office building," Lady Blake marveled, exchanging an incredulous smile with Mary.

"I've seen museums," Hilda said resentfully, scowling impatiently at her mother. "I've never seen the inside of an office. Is it nice there?"

"Mine is," Virginia offered. "But I'm a little biased - I think the Chicago Triumph office is the best place in the world. We could even show you the Public Services office, and the photography morgue, where we keep all the old negatives, and the printing presses, underneath the building, if you liked."

It sounded rather dismal to Mary, and, by the looks of things, to everyone else but Hilda, who looked thrilled. "And I suppose you have a...a flat of your own, or something?" Mary asked, not entirely sure how life for the modern working woman looked these days.

"I have a little place on the Near North Side," Virginia said. "It's not Prairie Avenue, but I like it well enough."

"Is Prairie Avenue like Belgravia?" Hilda wondered aloud, leaving Virginia to embark on an overview of chic Chicago neighborhoods.

"A little place - sounds very middle class," Mary confided to Charles, who gave a noncommittal little nod. Having had enough of the American travel narrative, which had launched into a description of Chicago's 'Elevated' train system and how it compared to the Underground, Mary turned her attention to the other group on the far side of the room – the 'guns' for this weekend's shoot, Sir Severus and his friends, who were elbow deep in their own discussion on African mineral rights, or something equally boring. "So, what should I know about your uncle's people?"

"So, my uncle is the gentleman facing us in the wingback chair – the man to his left is Colonel Gerald Towser, he's a career Army man, served with my uncle under Sir John French and was in India for a while, and then he was on the general staff during the last bit, he's been coming here to shoot for years. Then there's Sir Arthur Smythe, the older gentleman with the salt and pepper hair, another friend from the army, he writes every so often for the Times. And the man with his back to us is Mr. Roland Barnes. An industrialist, I guess you might say. My uncle's on the board of one of his companies, down in South Africa. Diamonds, I think. I'm not sure he's ever shot before, but he was in England, so my uncle thought he'd better come. You won't get anything out of him except business."

"I see."

Sir Severus' little cabal was short lived – Lady Blake extracted herself from the discussion on American travel, kissed her youngest and sent her up to a nursery-room dinner, and went to go make sure everyone knew who they were taking in to dinner, beginning the necessary introductions with Carroll and Captain Towser's wife, a stolid looking woman of fifty or so. (Carroll looked whatever the opposite of thrilled might be.) Finally, Lady Blake completed her circuit, bringing her husband into Mary and Charles' conversation.

"Severus, I don't think you've met Lady Mary Crawley. Lady Mary, my husband, Sir Severus."

Sir Severus Blake, on closer inspection, certainly lived up to his name – a tall, imposing man with an Wellingtonian nose and a cold demeanor, he looked like a latter-day Roman emperor in white tie, unhappy that his revels were being disturbed by something so plebian as meeting his houseguests.

"Charles speaks very highly of your work in Yorkshire, Lady Mary," Sir Severus said perfunctionarily.

"Your nephew is a credit to the Ministry, Sir Severus; if we have had any success at all it is because of his expert advice," Mary said with a smiling glance in Charles' direction; he ducked his head in humble acknowledgment and looked a little bashful.

"Expert, indeed," Sir Severus repeated suspiciously, scowling a little bit – at what? The thought that his heir should be a man of business, or that gentlemen were never experts in anything, or that Charles should have some work that took him away from Clonfinard for weeks on end? Perhaps all of them, and perhaps none.

Lady Julia recovered for him, smiling at Charles in support. "Yes, we are very proud of Charles' work. Did he show you Model Farm?

"You make it sound like a train set," Charles remarked off-handedly.

"Damned expensive train set," Sir Severus muttered, his eyes still searching the room longing to be back in the smoking room with his own chosen band instead of among the women. "There's Carew," he said suddenly, spotting his butler at the door. "Shall we go in?" He offered Mary his arm and marched off towards the door just as soon as Mary had fallen in step with him.

Mary was beginning to see now why the Blakes didn't entertain much, and why Hilda and Lillian had been so keen to have their cousin invite some of his own friends over for the weekend. Sir Severus seemed about as flexible as a stone wall, and just about as sociable. Lady Blake seemed a kind and capable hostess, but she had little to work with, out here in the country, and with such a spouse. Mary suddenly remembered her own childhood when she was about Lillian's age, the garden parties and teas and birthdays on the lawns of Downton, carefully minding her white gloves and trying to make sure her hat didn't blow away in a sudden breeze, or that her handkerchief, artfully dropped, was picked up by just the right gust of wind to blow it into the cricket match so she could have an excuse to go to talk to the 'young gentlemen' who'd been invited for the afternoon. Her father, and her mother, too, she should give Cora some credit, were the soul of society, always pleasant, always hospitable, always in the midst of some entertainment or another. She had learned a great deal from them – what lessons did Lillian learn from a father who seemed determined to go through life disappointed with most and at odds with the rest, and a mother who seemed to be so ill-suited to him?

She did not have much time to think on it further – Sir Severus was steering them in the direction of the dining room and its attendant delights.

Clonfinard's dining room, much like the rest of the house, was a relic of another age, the high, plaster-medallioned ceiling holding court over an impressively damasked dining table, while a whole chorus of classical statuary looked on from the niches in the walls. The golden tint of the walls should have imparted a sort of warmth to the space, but Mary found this room unbearably cold compared to the dining room at Downton. Perhaps it was the room itself, or perhaps it was her host – it was difficult to say.

Her seat was, as precedence dictated, at the far end of the table with Sir Severus, affording her a good view of everyone else as they entered the room and sat – Charles, mercifully, had been partnered with Lady MacInnis, putting them at the same end of the table with Mary and Sir Severus. Evelyn, partnering the ever-charming Christabel, was on Mary's other side, with Duff and Lillian just next. It was a masterwork of seating – precedence satisfied, and all the young people more or less at one end of the table, with the exception of Carroll, who would have to hold his own with Sir Severus' South African friend and the Towsers down at the other end with Lady Julia.

Virginia, as the lowest lady present, had come in last, squired by Sir Arthur, a dull dog if ever Mary had sat near one. Yet they seemed to be having quite a pleasant conversation as they entered, though Miss Sibley didn't seem to be getting a word in edgewise as Sir Arthur regaled her with the story of some hunt he'd been on a friend's plantation in Kenya.

Places taken, gloves removed and napkins delicately placed over them, the pageant of the dinner began. Sir Severus took a glance at both of his dinner partners as the footmen served round the soup and decided Lady MacInnis was the lesser of two evils, leaving Mary to talk, mercifully, with Evelyn.

Her gratitude at the fortuitous seating must have been evident – Evelyn stifled a broader grin and gave her the best of his reassuring smiles. "Charles says his aunt isn't very strict about your dinner conversation, so we may open up across the table later," he assured her softly. "And you've done worse – remember Lord Standish, at the Ardingtons?"

Mary had a sudden recollection of sprayed food and silently counted her blessings. "You're right, I have done worse."

"I heard Lady Blake mention Model Farm. You should go tomorrow morning – I'm sure Charles could find someone to give you a tour. Virginia and I rode out there this afternoon. It's quite something."

"Another Petit Trianon?"

Her sarcasm left no mark on Evelyn – he gave her a knowledgeable look and shook his head. "Model Farm is Charles' project – mud on the eggs and all. He's got a few fellows from the local Agricultural college running it for him, but Carew was saying that when he's in residence he's down there every morning, talking to the managers."

"And what did Miss Sibley think of it?" Mary asked delicately and making a careful study of Evelyn's face as she did so.

His gaze lifted across the table for a moment and he allowed himself a brief smile. "She thought it was wonderful. Or if she didn't, she has a remarkable way of making it seem as though she does." He glanced down at his plate, smiled again despite himself, and turned to Mary with a curious look. "Do you like her?"

"Like her?" Mary struggled for a minute, trying to find a diplomatic answer. "I've only just met her, Evelyn, I hardly know her. My maid was telling me you met in Paris?" If she was going to get answers, she'd better get them now, while the dinner was still warm. Everyone loved to talk while the cutlery covered over any little indiscretions.

"Yes, it's rather a funny story –"

But whatever the story was, Evelyn didn't get to share it – Sir Arthur cut in from across the table.

"Mr. Napier, Miss Sibley here was just telling me you've been in Paris, recently, studying the results of the war for the Ministry."

So she had managed to get a word in – Mary was almost impressed. Evelyn nodded in affirmation. "She is correct, Sir Arthur; I only just returned about a month or so ago."

"How'd you find things? Frogs ten years behind as usual?" Sir Arthur chuckled a little at his own joke and caught the eye of Colonel Towser, down the table near Lady Blake, the second man laughing a little as well.

"Perhaps not ten, but close enough."

"Are their farmers facing the same problems we are? Loss of income, higher rents, old equipment?" That was Lady MacInnis, probably thrilled that she was freed from listening to Sir Severus drone about business affairs.

"In some cases, Lady MacInnis, but not all. Equipment is certainly an issue for many. It was not worth mentioning before the war, when labor was plentiful, but now there are a million men dead or missing, and many of those are in higher proportion in the agricultural zones. Now they will need the equipment, and the factories must first convert themselves back. But rent is not among their problems. Many of the affected farmers have been freeholders since the Napoleonic wars."

Sir Severus sniffed from his end of the table. "Wonder if they're rethinking getting rid of their aristocracy now," he added judgmentally.

"Severus," Lady Blake warned from the end of the table.

But this was evidently a well-trod path in dinner table conversation, and now that Sir Severus had stepped to the mark he would follow it through no matter what his wife said. "Every farmer on my estates who wished to purchase the necessary equipment or make improvements has not been waylaid by me. And I have been more than generous in my rent rates, and the terms of loan I've given to any man wishing to purchase equipment for the better running of his farm."

"And every farmer who has wished to purchase his lease?" Duff asked from down the table, prodding the dragon with a devil's advocate grin lurking behind a polite smile.

The host bristled. "There have been few, and they were given decent terms of purchase on it, better than that silly Act required."

"But surely it's not silly to sell land at a profit and leave the bother of running the farm to the man who wants it?" Christabel put in. "The Kilmoreys, the Marquis of Downshire, Lord Londonderry – all the smart set are selling up to get rid of the bother. I wish Papa would join them. What's the use of a house you never use?"

"Stable revenue for the family, jobs and stable employment for the community around it," Mary said, her voice cold. "It is our responsibility to them."

Sir Severus fixed her with a patronizing look. "Perhaps that is the view in England, Lady Mary, but in Ireland many people consider themselves beyond the responsibility of their titled classes. Our tenantry has spent the last forty years in semi-open revolt for the right to take their land from its rightful owners. And their elected representatives, fools that they are, have supported them in it. If I ever meet him, I am going to give that Wyndham a piece of my mind. Thankfully there are still some who recognize the proper order of the world."

Christabel, though, wasn't going to be stopped, and she looked around the table for support. "Charles, surely you don't hold with such antiquated notions."

Mary had never seen Charles look more uncomfortable in his whole life – but she was interested to hear what he had to say. "In this case, Christabel, I side with Lady Mary and my uncle. All of our research has shown that in cases where large landowners stay on and take the necessary steps to reduce expenditure make their own home farms profitable, the local economy is more stable for it. There is a great deal of upheaval following a sale."

The answer seemed to satisfy Sir Severus, who reserved a little more of his censorious glare, and silence Christabel, who ducked her gaze back down to her plate and became extremely interested in the soup.

But Mary saw another hornet's nest just waiting to be disturbed, and she wasn't one to let that kind of opportunity pass her by. "And what does Miss Sibley think of all this? Is it all the arcane babble of a bygone age or a serious discussion?"

Virginia looked up in surprise from the other side of the table, taken aback that her opinion should be sought out on the plight of the landed classes. "I can see both sides of it," she managed with a truthful smile. "But I'm afraid I see the sides differently than you do. You keep speaking about one large farm or many smaller ones – if we have large farms in the Midwest, they're owned by large companies who don't care about the communities they live in. Small farms are the rule – and small farms under more owners in my part of the world means more business for the Houses of Deering, McCormick, and Deere. And what's good for the reaper and harvester companies is good for Chicago. More orders, more jobs, more houses built for workers, more taxes paid for roads and lakeshore improvements."

"So speaks a woman of sound business sense," Charles said, exchanging an impressed smile with the American.

"I'll take the compliment," Virginia said with a shrug. "But I also won't deny that I think Charles' Model Farm is a brilliant idea, too. And that's something only a large landowner would have the capital to start, or achieve any success with."

What little credit she'd raised in Sir Severus' view had quickly vanished, and the host was glowering at her slightly again. "We're not a charitable institute, Miss Sibley – with so many different operations the farm operates at a slight loss even in a good year. It may be a benefit to our local farmers, but it is an expensive one that I cannot in good conscience continue to support if I am to maintain my family and my place within the community."

Miss Sibley nodded, but she seemed to have found a suitable rebuttal. "Why not make it pay for itself then? Have someone write up a newsletter, every month, with keepers' notes, summaries of the latest journal articles and such, in plain language. Run off copies in at the local printers and charge a small subscription for it. You could even take letters from your subscribers. People love to see their names in print, and it'll be local advice. All the land grant schools run a similar service in the States, and it's very well received. Who better than the landlord whose family has been invested here for two hundred years to give advice?"

It was the best kind of riposte, the kind that compliments and kills at the same stroke, and Mary, the veteran of many such campaigns herself, had to give Virginia Sibley just the smallest amount of credit for the somewhat sour expression on Sir Severus' face, about half-way between gratitude and censure.

"I believe Lord Dunwoody does something similar on his estates," Duff said, trying to steer Sir Severus away from an impending explosion on modern manners and the many faces of impudence.

"I shall have to ask him the next time we meet at the Club." Honor satisfied, the matter could now be considered closed and the conversation could move in other directions.

"Are you still a member of the Kildare Street, Severus?" Colonel Towser inquired from the end of the table as the soup was removed and the cover made ready for the next course.

"No, canceled. I've no reason to be in Dublin these days, and one doesn't go to Belfast for the season. And next year we'll be thinking about London, of course."

"Will you be taking the whole family?" Virginia asked innocently.

Mary almost had to laugh at that, but Christabel, in this case, beat her to it. "I imagine they would, since it's for Lillian's presentation," she drawled icily, as if this were the most obvious thing in the world.

Virginia's face fell into polite reserve. "Oh, yes. How silly of me to forget. You must be thrilled, Lillian."

"I am," Lillian admitted breathlessly, probably very excited to be allowed to participate in the wider circle of conversation.

"Yes, you must forgive Miss Sibley, Lillian, the custom is much different in America," Mary observed, moderating her disdain for the sake of the dinner table. "I'm sure she didn't mean to forget you."

Virginia's gaze was hard to read – or was it perhaps merely hard? She had a steely glimmer in her eyes. "You underestimate me, Lady Mary. I have been presented. Twice."

The admission caught Mary off-guard, and the rest of the table, too – there was a swift-descending silence. Mary had to think twice about her rebuttal. "Twice? That's … very irregular." And it was – English girls were only presented abroad if they'd quite failed at home. Was Virginia a failure? That might be something to press her case with.

"Once to King George, and once to the late Tsar. And, of course, a coming-out ball in Chicago, but I doubt you count that." Virginia met Mary's gaze with determination. Two royal presentations! What a thought. But the silence remained, waiting for an explaination. "I have an uncle in the diplomatic service – he was posted in Russia for a while."

"Golly, most English girls don't half-manage one presentation, let alone two," Duff said with forced jollity. No one else found it very funny, and Duff dug himself into his dinner with renewed, silent interest.

"An uncle in the diplomatic service, you said," Sir Severus repeated, with detachment.

"Yes, Sir Severus. Herbert Sibley? He was posted at the American Embassy in London for many years, and was Consul General at Saint Petersburg for several years before the war."

"And the rest of your family, Miss Sibley? Are they also in civil service, or politics?"

"Of a kind," Miss Sibley said, evasive, and then, when she realized that that answer would not stand, elaborated. "My family is in newspapers, Lord Blake." It was not the best news to deliver to a table-full of aristocrats, particularly those whose lives so regularly appear in the pages of the society sheets with any manner of scandal attached.

"So you're not…just a journalist," Lillian pronounced, putting into words what the rest of the party was still trying to come to grips with. But whatever did it mean? That her father or brothers were journalists as well, that they ran a newsstand, perhaps?

"No," Virginia said with a guilty smile, "I'm not. I write for the paper; my family also _owns_ the paper. Half the marketshare for Sunday readership in Chicago, as well as controlling shares in papers in four other major cities."

The pronouncement didn't have the immediately desired effect. You could practically see the wheels turning in everyone's mind - Was there a large Sunday readership in Chicago? Shares in newspapers could mean anything. Were the cities in America really that large?

Having nearly married a newspaperman, Mary could say that she knew a fair deal about the money involved in that many publications, and Duff, who could be relied upon to know his business about shares and controlling stakes, had practically let his jaw drop when he heard 'four major cities'. So, that settled it. She wasn't little Miss Nobody from Nowhere – Virginia Sibley was a somebody, and an heiress somebody at that. Suddenly Evelyn's companion made much more sense – extensively traveled, accompanied by a maid, impeccably dressed, presented twice, and able to hold her own against a seven course dinner and all its accoutrements.

Not that money could buy society's _entire_ respect, though the May Goelets and Consuela Vanderbilts of the world were proof enough against that. But it certainly helped.

"Good gracious me," Lady MacInnis said, her hand fluttering at her throat. "We will have to watch ourselves, won't we."

"I make it a point not to report the doings of my friends to the society columnist, Lady MacInnis," Virginia assured her. "And if I did, I'd be sure to report my own doings as well."

"And is there…money in newspapers?" Christabel asked, attempting delicacy around that least loved of aristocratic topics and, with her usual venom, failing to achieve it.

"Quite a bit, Miss FitzGerald. We also hold patents on two pieces of equipment that are essential to printing anywhere in the world, and supply high grade newsprint from our paper mills in Canada to papers on three continents. I was just in London negotiating a new contract for paper, actually, with a – with a friend of yours, Lady Mary, I believe – Sir Richard Carlisle?"

Mary was startled to hear the name. But she should have known that any conversation about newspapers was bound to bring him up sooner or later. "I am acquainted with Sir Richard, yes. I haven't seen him in years," she admitted. "How is he getting on?"

"Business is good – I think that's all that matters in his world."

"You'd be right," Mary agreed. Well, if she was playing in Sir Richard's circles there could be no doubt about her fortune. The ship of state was starting to right itself, the silence becoming a little less stilted, conversation between partners returning to its normal background hum. But a determined knot of participants still wanted to squeeze a little bit more information out of the American, who was taking the opportunity to finally eat some of the next course before it, too disappeared.

"So, how did you meet Miss Sibley, exactly, Mr. Napier?" Christabel asked, still sounding deeply suspicious.

If Evelyn noticed her misgivings, he didn't acknowledge it. He smiled, but before he could say anything, the lady in question cut in. "I'd better tell this story; Evelyn will make it sound so much more glamorous than it was," she accused, giving him a knowledgeable glance and a cheeky smile of her own. "We met in France, during the War, when I fished Captain Napier's staff car out of a ditch."

Evelyn rolled his eyes and returned the smile. "My CO had managed to get his hands on a very well-known former racecar and was under the impression he could treat the straightaway between our position and HQ like Brooklands on our way to a staff meeting. The delusion ended when he hit a pothole and sent the front end off the road. And then, just as suddenly, this ambulance has driven up and the driver – who, we have finally realized after several moments in shock, is a woman wearing a nurse's uniform - is rigging a chain to our bumper, while the two of us are just standing there on the side of the road looking pathetic."

"A nurse, driving an ambulance? That's highly irregular," Sir Arthur observed judgmentally, glancing at his dinner companion with some suspicion of his own.

"I was ferrying it, for lack of a better term," Virginia clarified. "The driver was in one of our beds in a dead faint, and none of the other nurses could tell a handbrake from a handcrank. Poor man had been up two or three days straight. So, I volunteered to take it back and hitch home with the next convoy, and came along two very bewildered looking staff officers in the bargain."

"Not my finest hour," Evelyn admitted.

"You were only a little pathetic. More pitiful than pathetic," Virginia conceded with a fond smile. "And I can't imagine what they thought of you at headquarters that afternoon. We must have looked a sight when we drove up."

"She'd followed us back, you see, to make sure nothing else broke," Evelyn explained with one of his most charming smiles. "And I thought you looked magnificent," he maintained valiantly. "Everyone else did, too - You were the talk of headquarters for weeks afterwards. I nearly had to fight three of the other fellows for a chance to talk to you the next time you came 'round."

"You never told me that!"

"Blows were almost exchanged," Evelyn said solemnly.

"I suppose you came over to save the day with Pershing and the rest in seventeen," Colonel Towser, bristling with patriotic umbrage, asked from the far end of the table.

"No, I was over in fifteen, with my cousin," Virginia countered, her voice managing to sound factual, and not at all defensive. The Colonel looked stunned. "He'd gotten an invitation to go see Russia and their situation, to report on it as an exclusive story in the American press, because of my uncle - Bertie's father. I went for the fun of it - his girl Friday, so to speak. It was supposed to be an official schedule, very safe, very predictable, but Bertie's not one for sticking to the rules. And..." Virginia trailed off, obviously not sure how appropriate this was for the dinner table. "Well, you couldn't see it and not want to stick your oar in. I took a crash course through the Red Cross, and joined the American Hospital in Paris eight months later, as a nurse. The rest I'm sure I don't have to repeat."

"What an adventure," Christabel said, quite thoughtlessly, for the older men, and some of the women, around the table flinched.

"I'm not sure adventure is quite the word for it," Virginia said lightly, smiling politely in Christabel's direction. "But it was certainly not what I expected it to be." Her eyes, Mary noticed, met Evelyn's as her gaze moved back to her plate, and Mary saw the man smile as if to reassure her.

"I was reading in the Daily Mail the other day about a pair of young lady drivers who've written a book about their experiences," Mrs. Towser said, from the other end of the table.

That, of course, sparked more thoughts about Kipling, Brooke, Sassoon, and some American fellows Evelyn had met in Paris, and from there the conversation steered back to familiar topics, Henley, Cowes, race week, Ascot, the coming Season, the new fads for racing cars and the south of France and themed dinners, and where Sir Severus and Lady Blake would stay in London for Lillian's presentation, and the constantly changing place of the modern debutante in society.

It was comfortable conversation, safe and respectable, and Mary had no problem whatsoever contributing every now and again. Virginia, she noticed, stayed in the shallows of the discussion, the perfect dinner guest once more – laughing at everyone else's jokes and only contributing her own if they were short and to the point. Mary hated to admit that her defects were growing less numerous by the hour – she had money, had been presented, had family in politics, could hold a fork correctly and hold her own at a dinner table, even had a respectable war record, for pity's sake! If she hadn't been American, Mary hated to admit she probably would have liked her.

Or would she have? Mary had spent four years of her life as a deb in other people's ballrooms, and she knew herself well enough to know she liked to be the only star in the sky. Which she had been, for many years. Then Matthew had come along, and she hated him at first for being one of the first people in a long time to remember that she was merely a human being, and no star. But he'd woken up in her all the movements of the heart that human beings have and stars do not, and he'd made sure she remembered to exercise them regularly, so she would not forget their proper use.

There were two parts of her mind at war with each other. On the one side were all the happy memories of Matthew, all the little victories she'd felt and shared with him and the smiles that had passed between them, and memories of the great depth he had brought out in her, depth that she had, for a long time, believed to be lost with him.

And on the other side - on the other side of her mind were so many memories of Matthew's retorts and rebuttals, all his hopes for her and about her. It was the strangest thing - for so long after his death she'd felt so empty, so lost, and then, as Tom had started to draw her into Matthew's plans and projects, his opinions began to filter back to her, and her heart remembered its carefully coached movements. She heard them every time she went to dress, or to pick clothes for George, or even to walk around Downton. Even in death he argued with her, his once-proffered opinions trying to sway her away from wearing a particular piece of jewelry, or not to let her father bully her away from buying the pigs.

Lately, though, as Tony and Charles and Evelyn had come and called and hinted and smiled and made her laugh in spite of all her best efforts, her memories kept drawing her back to the conversations she'd had with Matthew after he'd been injured, and all the times he'd said so adamantly he wanted Lavinia to be happy without him, and how happy he was that Mary would have been marrying Carlisle.

_I can only relax because I know that you have a real life coming._

There were times when she found herself trying to evaluate whether this was her mind trying to find reasons to release her from her obligations as a widow, or whether it was what Matthew really would have wanted. It was a voice she hated to hear, hated even more to remember - and yet it was so like Matthew, to urge her to give him up and go on without him.

As if she could give him up. He was irreplaceable - that much could not be repeated often enough. But for second chances and second-bests…such choice.

On the one hand, Tony, Viscount Gillingham, thirty, family friend, record of exemplary service in the Navy with Admiral Jellicoe, thorough gentleman, interested in horses and all good society, nearly engaged at least once, a known quantity in the equation of love and marriage and expectations thereon, a man with a professed and proven interest in Mary, and a great believer in fair fights.

But would he fight? The Foyles had given up on their house, and she was determined Downton should not go the same way. Charles, on the other hand, hated the idea of families giving up.

She glanced up from her plate to study Charles for a moment, holding his ground against his uncle once more. Charles Blake, thirty-two, never married, gentleman farmer and theoretician, man of practical talents and good humor. A good leader - one didn't serve on the Admiral's flagship without some skills in that department- and a loyal friend. Matthew, she decided, would have liked him. But plenty of women had affairs with their living husbands' friends. Was that really a qualification she wanted to rely upon?

Why had it come down to Charles and Tony? Evelyn was steady, sensible, sociable, reliable as a rock and another known quantity. Not to say that her family didn't know Charles, or even Tony, but Evelyn had been - Was it that he was too well known?

Perhaps it was the burden of associations. When Mary thought of Charles, she remembered scrambled eggs at four in the morning, a warm and cosy thought. Tony faded into a background of concerned expressions and rueful smiles and Evelyn - 'the ghastly business' was Evelyn's touchstone. Could he have taken her seriously, with all that behind them? She had told Matthew, in her own time; Evelyn had lived it first-hand.

It was a matter, she decided, of pride. She would always be a sort of princess in need of saving to Evelyn, and whatever she was now, princess or not, saving had no part in it. Matthew had been helpmate, guide, and fellow devil's advocate, and she needed all of those things, particularly the last. She was inclined to get comfortable in her way of doing things, and comfort was what had led Downton into debt before. Evelyn and Tony didn't challenge her - Charles did. Mary found herself smiling across the table as Evelyn tried to conciliate yet again, this time between Charles and his uncle, as he always did and would probably always do.

No, Evelyn was too good - too ready to please. He would not do for Mary. But the rough-and-ready American would walk all over him before he knew what had happened, and Evelyn, of all people, didn't deserve that. He was in deadly earnest about this woman, and Mary wasn't going to stand idly by and watch him get his heart broken.

They proceeded though the rest of dinner without notable incident – Charles' pigs, it transpired, had provided the roast for the evening, and Mary was afforded another opportunity to talk about the Downton Farms, and the troubles of getting good help. Then the party dismissed themselves, the ladies disappearing to the drawing room while the gentleman made their way to the billiard room for a bit of port and cigars.

The lure of discussing Lillian's coming season was too strong to resist without the gentleman present, and Christabel happily installed herself near Lady Blake and Lillian discussing with rapturous attention which couturiers could be relied upon for dresses and shoes and the thousand other fripperies of a London Season. Lady MacInnis stayed silent, while Mrs. Towser, too, rejoiced and smiled along with Christabel over luxuries Mary was sure she'd couldn't afford on a dress allowance driven by a Colonel's peacetime pay.

But eventually, the temptation of the American drew Virginia back into the center of conversation. On an aside about one of the linen factories Lord Blake owned, Lady Blake asked conversationally, "How long did you say your family had been in newspapers, Miss Sibley?"

The American roused herself from the couch where she'd been daydreaming. "My grandfather bought the Triumph in 1845. All of his sons, and most of his grandsons have worked for the paper since then."

It was an opportunity too good to pass up. "Three whole generations. How exhilarating. You must be so proud, to have kept it up so long," Mary said, veiling her sarcasm with a well-honed impression of enthusiasm.

But the American was smarter than she looked – she met Mary's façade with one of her own, coolly confident in her own truth. "Families like yours inherit land and titles, and families like mine inherit subscription lists and copy-editors. There's not much difference between the two, as I see it." Virginia took notice of Mary's dismissive sneer and sat up a little straighter in her own chair. "What does owning Downton Abbey, or Clonfinard, or Branksome Hall mean? It means you have kept your place in the world, that you've carried on a legacy. The Triumph is the same. Every paper we publish is the continuance of my grandfather's work. And it makes me just as proud as a well-run dinner party, or the annual church bazaar." She leveled a long smirk at Mary, her eyes daring the other woman to 'put that in her pipe and smoke it.'

There was a lull in conversation as the gentleman returned from their cigars – Sir Severus' friends resumed their post by the mantle where they'd installed themselves before dinner, and Duff, after taking a brief poll, sent Carew to find some cards, promising to go easy on Charles. Evelyn, who wasn't much for cards of any kind, wandered over to where the ladies on the far side of the room, sitting down with his cocktail as more of an observer than a participant.

Seeing that everyone seemed to be comfortably installed, Lady Blake returned to the conversation at hand. "It must keep you away from home a great deal. Your work with the paper."

"Not more than any other job, I suppose," the journalist shrugged. "I keep my own hours, I can write from anywhere, and it doesn't take much more than a telephone to keep in touch with the editors at home."

"But what if you got married?" Lillian wanted to know.

"If I got married, it should be to a man who understood what the newspaper meant to me, and who'd let me keep running it," Virginia confided in the younger woman.

"Of course, it's terribly old-fashioned to think of women staying at home in this day and age," Mary said. "All that time spent planning entertainments and keeping house when it could be spent so much better elsewhere."

"There isn't much housekeeping to be done in a Lake Shore Drive apartment, Lady Mary," Virginia pointed out.

"Oh, Evelyn, think how much simpler our lives would be in comfortable little apartments in London. We absolutely must think about selling up," Mary rhapsodized with her usual sarcasm to Evelyn, who, for once in his life, seemed absolutely unprepared to take it. But Virginia, it seemed, had had enough. She rose, considered saying something, and thought the better of it before addressing their hostess.

"You'll have to excuse me, Lady Blake. I find I've rather a headache."

Lady Blake was suddenly motherly. "Oh dear. Was it the pudding? I thought it was a bit oversweet myself, Mrs. Morrow -"

"No, not at all; everything was delicious. I'm just a bit tired, that's all. Very long day, a lot of traveling – I think it's catching up with me."

"Do you need Mrs. Booth to show you to your room? Or get you a headache powder?"

"No, no, thank you. You're very kind to offer, but I think I can find it on my own."

"Well, good night, then. Breakfast is served at nine, if you're coming down, and they'll be leaving at ten for the shooting."

Virginia nodded her thanks and then left, leaving Mary pleased as punch in the drawing room. _Lady Mary takes the game, and that's set, and match to the English._ No, better not say match just yet – there was the rest of the weekend to consider. But all the same, she loved a victory, and a rival shuffling off upstairs in defeat made her radiant with pleasure.

Lady Blake turned her attentions to the business of the season with Christabel and Lillian, and Evelyn moved his chair closer to Mary's, his face looking very purposeful.

"I don't think that's what Virginia meant, when she talked about her apartment."

There was a time and a place for being charitable, and Mary wasn't there at the moment. "Isn't it? She doesn't seem to think very much of houses like this one. Or the work to keep them up. And you heard her - she won't give up the newspaper for anyone."

This made Evelyn smile – a curious turn. "That's one of the things I like about her. She doesn't intend to change for anyone except herself."

"And will you think so highly of her when she's moved you away from all your friends and everything that matters to you?" Mary asked sharply, moving in for the kill.

"Virginia wouldn't do that," he said loyally.

"Oh, Evelyn," she observed with pity. "How trusting you are."

Her friend considered her for a moment, and then rose from his chair, shaking his head. "I know what you're doing, and it won't work."

"She's not one of us, Evelyn. She won't fit in. Good heavens, you'll be the laughingstock of London when everyone finds out you've married a... newspaper publisher."

"You were prepared to do that once," Evelyn fired back, with a brusque tone that was startling coming from him. Mary's mouth was a hard line at the memory. "They love her already in London – she's very in with the smart set. No one laughs about her seat on a horse, or her table manners, or her style of dress. No one murmurs when she mentions her uncle the diplomat, or her cousin the senator, or her five thousand acres, or the three houses she owns. And no one will laugh at her income, when it comes to it."

"You're not marrying her for her money," Mary scoffed, and then, with a sudden jolt of reality, glanced at Evelyn. "Are you?"

His face was suddenly colder than she thought she'd ever seen him before. "If you have to ask that question, Mary, you don't know me at all." Evelyn rose to say his good-nights to Lady Blake and Sir Severus, and then turned back to Mary. "I'd never seen it before tonight. But now I understand what Charles meant, about you being aloof. I didn't think I'd ever know, but now I do."

And with that, he went to join Duff, Carroll, and Charles at the card table, leaving Mary alone in her corner of the drawing room, a little bit of the shine gone from her smile.

She said her good-nights to Lady Blake, using a long day of travel as her excuse for an early evening, and climbed the stairs to return to the comfort of Anna's capable hands unpinning her hair and twisting it into a braid before bed. She'd take a tray in her room tomorrow, married women were allowed that luxury, and she could sleep in a little more for it.

But after Anna had gone and the lights were off, Mary found herself still awake, turning over in the unfamiliar bed as her mind kept turning over what Evelyn had said. _I didn't think I'd ever know, but now I do._ He'd said once that he was blind where she was concerned – had she lost that? The one person, apart from Matthew, who had constantly thought she could do no wrong - had she lost him?

There was a voice, out in the corridor, and a muffled rapping on a door. Mary sat up to listen, her eyes searching the darkness of her room for a moment.

"Virginia? Are you still –" It was Evelyn, coming up from the drawing room and making a quick, illicit stop at his traveling companion's room. Mary, all pretense of sleep gone, carefully rolled back the covers and tip-toed over to the door, her natural curiosity aroused.

The door across the hall opened a crack – Mary heard it move on its hinges. "Ev, what are you doing? Someone will raise hell if they find you out here." She sounded scandalized – _At least she has that to recommend her_, Mary thought sourly.

"Oh, they'll be down for another hour yet." He paused, considering his words. Mary could almost see him fidgeting the way he always did. "I wanted to find out how you were feeling...after dinner."

A significant pause from Virginia. "Well, I've felt worse," she admitted. And then, explosively, "I hate proving myself to these people like a parrot at the zoo; it makes me feel so damnably cheap!"

"You're not cheap. Don't say such things." And then, as an observation, "Mary was rather unkind."

Virginia snorted. "Unkind's a nice word for it. But I should be used to it by now."

"No, you shouldn't. She shouldn't push you about like that."

"Why are you apologizing for her? She's not family."

"Well, she almost is - and, to be honest, I think it's rather my fault."

There was rising fury in Virginia's voice. "Your fault? Your fault? Ev -"

Evelyn cut her off. "Mary's an oldest child. Sometimes she forgets she can't have all the toy soldiers in the box."

The expression stopped Mary cold. Was that what Evelyn thought of her, a little girl in a fit of nursery-room petulance? But Virginia didn't correct him. "You're not a toy, Ev. And why should she need all of them, when anyone with half a brain can see Charles is crazy about her?"

Evelyn considered this for a moment. "I think it's more the principle of the thing with her."

This seemed to please Virginia, who let her breath out with a contented sound. "Well, you're one soldier she can't have back. I blacked a few eyes in the schoolyard in my day - I'm tough. We'll stick it out."

Mary was sure Evelyn smiled at that. "I don't deserve you."

"You deserve the world, Ev," Virginia assured him. A dressing gown rustle, the sound of lips meeting skin, a long pause in other sounds - she'd kissed him. "There. Has that cheered you?"

"Immensely." He couldn't have sounded more pleased.

"I was thinking about walking out with you tomorrow - Amy brought warm tweeds."

"In the morning?" Evelyn sounded doubtful. "That'll raise more eyebrows than Mary's."

"But won't you – "

"I'll be fine," Evelyn assured her. "They'll give you all kinds grief if you're out all day with us. It's not done."

"So I'm to be abandoned at home until the hunters return?" Virginia sounded like she was joking, but Mary got the feeling that she was genuinely put out at being left behind. For a woman like Virginia Sibley, a morning at home with a house full of women offered very slim rewards indeed.

"You might ask Lady Blake for another chance to ride. I'm sure she'd –"

She stopped him mid-sentence. "I should have said so before we turned in for the night. I'll live."

"You could try to get to know Mary a little better," Evelyn suggested lightly.

Virginia laughed openly at that. "You might have a soft spot for her, Ev, but I'm not obliged to as well. Now kiss me again and I'll see you tomorrow at breakfast downstairs." There was another pause, longer this time, and a few more enthusiastic sounds of appreciation that made Mary distinctly uncomfortable. But if they'd talk in the corridor, it was all fair game. One couldn't help overhearing what came under one's door. "You'd better get to bed," she said finally. "We wouldn't want to cause too much of a scandal." Another quick kiss, and Evelyn's footsteps began to move off. "Ev," she called softly, and the footsteps stopped. "I wouldn't make you give up Branksome Hall. I hope you know that."

"I know." He sounded so very sure of himself. "I wouldn't make you give up the paper, either."

The door closed, the footsteps moved off, and Mary found herself with much more to think about than before, falling back into bed for a night of fitful dreams and no real rest.

* * *

I was so proud of myself for that toy soldiers line – it ties up so many things in this story about Mary (and Evelyn, for that matter). But I think it's true! In season one we see it a little more, but Mary likes to own the field, which I think is still true as she gets older, just in a less obvious way.

Sidenote:

Chicago is my city, and I love it and its history dearly, which is why it gets a little cameo role in this chapter. There is not now, nor do I think has ever been, such thing as a 'small Lake Shore Drive apartment' and you can still go to Mr. Field's new museum down by the Lake (and see some of the exact same exhibits that Virginia and Hilly would have seen), or go ride the escalators at his department store (even if the doors now say 'Macy's'). And I know exactly which office Virginia talks about when she discusses her office at the Triumph – it's inside my favorite building in Chicago and overlooks the river. The trip that she talks about taking with Bert at the start of the war to see the Russian front really did happen – the real Bert wrote a book about it afterwards.

As for Virginia herself, she is equal parts Eleanor Medill Patterson, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, and Freya Stark, and if you don't know who any of those redoubtable ladies are, you should look them up, because they're all awesome.


	3. Act 2: Saturday

_This chapter's much more fun if you take a musical break during the dancing after dinner. All the performers and songs mentioned are appropriate to 1923, with the possible exception of Isham Jones' Swingin' Down the Lane, which may or may not have been recorded in 1923 with the lyrics quoted in this chapter. You can find them all on YouTube._

_Fun aside, I should also tell you that this chapter is the most emotional._

* * *

_Act 2, Scene 1: Saturday Morning_

Mary found herself, the next morning, lingering over her breakfast tray. She was not by nature a very sluggish person, but she was also not particularly enthralled by the idea of running into Evelyn, or Virginia, until she'd had a chance to wake up a little more. Clonfinard was mercifully quiet when she finally went downstairs. Going into the drawing room, she was a little surprised to find only Charles' Aunt Julia, sitting by the window working on a piece of embroidery.

"I'm afraid you've missed the others, my dear," Lady Blake said, hardly looking up from her needlework. "The men left quite early, Christabel took the motor into town, Sarah MacInnes is upstairs writing letters, and Lillian took Miss Sibley on a tour of the house."

Mary nodded, glad, for once, to have missed everyone. "My apologies, Lady Blake – I slept rather poorly. Just anxious," she assured her hostess as Julia looked up, immediately concerned for her hospitality. The older woman's face moved to kind indulgence at the mention of anxiety.

"You must be missing your son," she said kindly. Finding that as good a reason as any for her fictional malaise, Mary nodded and tried to find her concerned, motherly look. "I remember when Sir Severus and I went on our first trip after Lillian was born. It was just a weekend away in Belfast, but I had the hardest time sleeping without seeing her in her bed for the night. I wasn't convinced anyone could take care of her like I could." She smiled again at Mary, who nodded, and went to go find a book, browsing the shelves but not really reading any of the titles, all too aware that Lady Blake was still watching her. She chose a book at random and went to go sit down, across from Julia. "Are you enjoying Clonfinard, Lady Mary? Apart from missing your son, of course."

"It's been a long time since I came to such a party," Mary said truthfully, which neither answered the question nor offended anyone with the answer, a move she was sure was not lost on Lady Blake.

"And could you…see yourself staying on?" Lady Blake asked, her eyes downcast but her words careful.

Mary glanced at her hostess with unhidden surprise. "Did Charles ask you to say that?" The question was out of her mouth before she even realized she wanted to ask it.

Lady Blake laughed. "Charles? Goodness, no, Charles hasn't trusted me with his romantic intrigues since he told me he thought Kitty Doncaster had pretty hair and I had the audacity to invite her to tea again. He was furious," she added. Mary nodded silently. "No, I was…was just wondering. For my own purposes. An aunt is allowed, I'm sure."

The older woman glanced at her embroidery, and then set it down. "They had a tremendous fight when he came home and announced he'd joined the Navy, you know, Severus and Charles. Right here in this room," she remembered aloud. Mary looked up from studying her book, still unopened on her lap.

"Severus was furious – he kept going on about how it would how it would hurt us, how he was ruining his education and letting down Clonfinard and how dreadfully selfish it was of him to go and put himself in harm's way. But it was what Charles wanted to do. It was, a little selfish, I think, but it was selfish of Severus to say it, too.

"Truth be told, I think Severus was a little disappointed he'd chosen the Navy. If it had been the Army, he could have had some influence, you see, about where Charles would be posted, spoken to friends and that. But the Admiralty doesn't know him, and I think Charles wanted that. He wanted to make his own way without any help. He usually does."

Mary nodded mutely.

"My husband loves Charles in his own way - more than he would have loved his own son, I think. Even if he doesn't show it sometimes. He sets a lot by him. We all do."

_Is that a warning?_ Mary wondered.

"We don't usually hear about his work - he was never good at writing home, even when he was at university. But he made a quick visit this spring, to see the girls and catch up with them, and after dinner he talked for hours when they asked him." She paused, and caught Mary's eye. "Of all the houses he's studied, Downton is the only one we've ever actually heard about," she said softly.

"I … didn't realize." Mary's voice was creaky, and quiet, as though she'd forgotten how to speak.

Julia Blake smiled. "He knows his mind, and he won't budge when he's set to it – I suppose that's what made me think about that argument before the war. I think he's rather set on you."

"Are you trying to tell me you disapprove of me, Lady Blake?" Mary asked without guile, her voice just a little stronger. There were more delicate ways to ask the question, she was sure, but she found she couldn't think of any just at the moment.

"Disapprove? Quite the opposite – I approve of you a great deal. You and Charles seem very well suited. He knows his mind, and I think you're more than a match for him. You have strong opinions, and you defend them well. A marriage of equals is a very good thing. Especially when two large estates like yours are involved."

"I hold Downton in trust for my son, George," Mary explained, feeling as though she were under intense scrutiny. "The bulk of my late husband Matthew's fortune rests with him. If that changes your opinion of me, Lady Blake, then I am sorry for it."

And it would – she was sure of it. How many years had she had that argument with the men she was set to marry, with Patrick and Crowborough and Matthew and Richard and Matthew again? That least loved of subjects – money.

She kept her gaze level with Lady Blake's, expecting shock, censure, or disappointment – but none came. The baronet's wife, instead, smiled benevolently. "My dear, why ever should that matter? Charles has more money than he knows what to do with, and he's very capable of making more. He needs a woman who can run this house just as capably as she can run him."

"You don't …wish for him to …make a good connection?" _In other words, is my family not good enough for yours, to consider a connection a worthy thing?_

"I want him to be happy, Lady Mary. Everything else after that is… unexpected delight. " Lady Blake studied her for moment and returned her full attention to her embroidery, remarking, in an offhand manner, "I've heard from Charles that you and Mr. Napier are quite good friends. I'm so pleased you two got to have a chance to talk at dinner last night. Partnering a total stranger on the first night at a party is such an anxiety."

Now, _that _was unexpected. "Evelyn is a very old friend of the family," Mary replied, unsure where this was going.

"I'm so glad he was able to bring Miss Sibl ey," Lady Blake went on with a nonchalance that seemed far too practiced to be anything but for show. "They make a nice couple, don't you think? He seems much more content with the world when she's in the room." Mary didn't have time to make a reply – Lady Blake continued, "Charles said they met in Paris while Mr. Napier was on assignment for the Ministry. Rather lucky stroke for him – apparently no one from the office wanted to go. Charles seemed to think Mr. Napier might have suffered a setback of some kind to make him take the job – his acceptance was very sudden, apparently. But he won't tell me all the details."

"I'm sure I don't know. Evelyn and I don't speak as often as we'd like." What was she getting at?

"Yes, that is rather the trouble with men, isn't it? Sometimes they have such a hard time telling us what they want. And sometimes we have trouble hearing them," the older woman added with a smile. "I think that's enough time with a needle for me today. We'll leave at twelve for the luncheon. Enjoy your book."

And with that, she was gone. _Well, that was cryptic,_ Mary wondered to herself, glancing at the book she'd chosen again, and reading the title properly for the first time. _Practical Handbook of Bee Culture._ She rolled her eyes, ashamed that she should be so preoccupied as to pick up something so wildly outside her taste, and tossed the offending volume on the couch.

What had Lady Blake been trying to say? Charles liked her – that much she knew. Charles would fight for what he wanted, and he wanted Mary. He'd told her as much already himself. Charles liked to win on his own merit – that was evident enough already. Charles' family would like her if Charles wanted them to – well and good. Lady Blake would rather they married quickly – she'd heard enough of all that talk of high hopes and _We all think much of him_ before to know that it meant they wanted an heir.

But to speak of Virginia, and Evelyn? That was harder to read. In another context, it would have merely been small talk. But nothing about that exchange had been small – Lady Blake had calculated every word and off-hand glance. _Old friends…nice couple…more content…some setback_.

Oh, so _that_ was it. Lady Blake thought that Evelyn had weighed his chances with Mary, given up, gone on assignment to Paris to get over it, and fallen in with Virginia to salve his wounded heart. And she thought Mary should do the same – give up and go on. Preferably with Charles. She thought Mary and Evelyn closer than they were, then, taking Mary's proprietary interest in Evelyn as the interest of a jealous lover, rather than a concerned friend.

Well, let her think what she liked. Mary knew what she wanted, and she was determined to see it done. She picked up the apiculture book from where she'd flung it on the couch and went to reshelve it.

_Mary's the oldest. Sometimes she forgets she can't have all the toy soldiers in the box_. Evelyn's words from last night echoed uncomfortably again. Was she really as selfish as that? No, no, of course not, silly to think so. He didn't know her at all. It was out of concern for his interests. They'd see.

Luncheon was to be out in the field, a proper meal with time afterwards for two or even perhaps three drives before everyone came in to dress for dinner. Appropriately hatted, immaculately gloved, and sensibly shod, they piled into the largest of the house cars so that Barnard could drive them out to the luncheon site, where a pair of tents – one for the meal itself and another for the kitchen staff to reconjure the remaining warmth from the hayboxes and then plate it all for proper serving. No picnic lunch on the grass this – a table with full service laid for sixteen had made its way all the way from the house down to the woods, probably over the last several days and with the help of more than several hallboys and carters.

"Who wished to hunt, I know where is a hind," Duff called out mischievously as the ladies alighted from the car, finding a spare bit of energy to jog over and help everyone down from the car.

"Oh, where? Can we go see?" Lillian asked eagerly, looking around for a glimpse of the promised animal.

"Lord Westicott is being ridiculous. Haven't been any hinds in these parts since the Stuarts," Sir Severus observed sharply as he came up behind them, sending his eldest daughter's face into despair that seemed all the more plaintive given her father's utter disregard for her.

"It's a quotation, Lillian," Virginia said kindly. "From a poem by Thomas Wyatt, I think. He wrote about Anne Boleyn and how he couldn't catch her as a lover." It was meant to cheer Lillian, but it didn't do much – the eldest Blake girl nodded and went gloomily into the tent to wait for the others.

"How was the shooting today?" Julia Blake was asking her husband.

"Not bad. Masterman's saved the best of the coveys for this afternoon. I haven't got the count so far, but Roberts might." Sir Severus looked around for his loader, but his wife had seen something else to capture her concern.

"My goodness, Mr. Napier, are you quite alright? You're white as a sheet!" Julia Blake exclaimed in surprise. And it was true – against the deep gray of his tweeds and in the half-light of the tent, Evelyn looked about as pale as death and just as pleasant, his eyes full of some hard determination, as if he were having trouble standing or focusing his vision.

"Just a little hungry, Lady Blake, nothing a good luncheon won't fix," the young man said bravely, coming out of his reverie with a start. "Pray don't trouble about it."

Julia looked unconvinced, but she let the matter drop, turning to ask her nephew for his impressions on how the morning's shooting had gone. Virginia, however, rushed in where her hostess had left off, talking in low, concerned tones to her traveling companion with worry evident in her face. When Mary looked back again, they had gone, the tent flap swinging a little with their passing.

She had hardly taken two steps in that direction when conversation pulled her back. "Lady Mary, do tell me where you had that suit made," Christabel drawled, looking Mary up and down like a dress-maker's mannequin. "It's perfectly darling."

By the time Mary had given Christabel the name of her tailor, her address, and let Christabel ramble through a diatribe on how hard it was to find someone who could keep up with the fashion and stay within a budget, where Virginia and Evelyn had gone was anyone's guess. Mary made some half-hearted excuse about having heard her name on the other side of the tent, and ducked out to look for them.

There were precious few places to disappear to – the beaters and loaders had all stretched themselves out on the turf away from the kitchen tent, helping themselves to a large plate of sandwiches, a keg of beer, and the transparent conversation of one or two of the kitchen maids who had been brought along to help serve the luncheon. They couldn't have gone to the woods, or Mary would have seen them against the fall color, and the car, parked behind the kitchen tent, yielded no one behind its large windows and wood paneling. That left only one more possibility – the kitchen tent itself.

She would not have been afraid of approaching such an installation at Downton – she was the master's daughter and it was her right to look in on things like that now and then. But this was someone else's party, and someone else's staff, and it was not done. Still - if Virginia was going to pull Evelyn into something unsuitable, then Mary would be there to save him from himself.

In between the hustle and bustle of Mrs. Morrow, the cook, ordering her staff about, there were two low voices on the other side of the tent wall, and one of them was very clearly Virginia's. Mary slowed her step and stopped to listen.

"You shouldn't have come, Ev, it isn't good for you." Something was clattering against china – a teaspoon being stirred, quite violently. Virginia was upset with something.

"I didn't want to let Charles down."

"To hell with Charles!" Virginia exploded, struggling to keep herself from being overheard. "To hell with all of them," she added, modulating her voice a little more. "Now, drink that. All of it. It'll help with the shaking."

Shaking? Was Evelyn ill? He must have done as she had asked, because Mary heard no further objections. "You'll go back to the house after luncheon - I'll tell them you're not well. They'll believe me; Mrs. Towser's convinced I'm practically a doctor."

A clatter of cup and saucer. "I can't just…it's very unsporting."

"Then I'll stay with you. You can't send me back to the house, Ev, I won't go."

But Evelyn wasn't listening. "Do you hear something?"

Well, it was now or never. Mary rounded the corner of the kitchen tent and just managed to see, after a stumble of sudden movement, the startling tableau of Virginia and Evelyn locked in a very enthusiastic kiss, the American pressing him back against one of the kitchen tables. One of the kitchen maids turned in their direction and gasped audibly, and Virginia broke away, looking back at Mary as if daring her to say she'd done something wrong while Evelyn looked extremely embarrassed.

"Oh, there you are," Mary said, as if what she' d seen was the most normal thing in the world, refusing to be ruffled. "Lady Blake was looking for you, Evelyn."

"Yes, thank you, Mary," Evelyn said, swallowing and adjusting his cuffs for a moment before pushing past both women to join the rest of the party. Mary gave Virginia another withering look and followed. She wasn't for a minute going to believe Virginia had torn Evelyn away from the party to sneak a kiss, but that was a confrontation for another time.

Virginia watched them both leave and, quite sure they were both gone, sighed and picked up the teacup Evelyn had left on the counter, the teacup she'd kissed him so suddenly to hide.

"Thank you so much for your help, Mrs. Morrow," she said, stepping further into the field kitchen and returning the cup and saucer to the cook. "I have been very irregular today, I realize. You've been most accommodating."

"Oh, bless you, Miss Sibley, it were only a cup of hot water with some sugar in," Mrs. Morrow assured her. "No trouble at all."

"Nevertheless, much appreciated. My… apologies for upsetting your staff." She pressed her hands against one of the creases along the front of her dress and glanced at the other women, several of whom were looking at her with dark, disparaging looks.

"Nothing most of them haven't done themselves of an evening, Miss Sibley, begging your pardon," the cook confided with a little grin. "And he's a handsome lad, that Mr. Napier. A shame about his…well, I had a nephew, like him. Came home from the war in such a state. Jumped every time someone dropped a spoon. He's dead now, poor man. They said it was the arsenic he took that killed him, but it was the war, and coming home after, no mistake. Didn't have anyone who cared for him."

"There's more of that around than I think we know, Mrs. Morrow," Virginia agreed. "Thank you again. I'm sure luncheon will be delicious." She gave a little bow with her head and stepped back outside, striding back towards the tent and squaring her shoulders as if nothing had happened.

"She's a good girl, that Miss Sibley. I hope he sees that." Mrs. Morrow observed to no one in particular as she watched the American leave, returning to the luncheon preparations.

"How is it we let her go around kissing fellows like a trollop and no one threatens her with a boxed ear?" One of the maids asked with a mutinous look on her face.

"Because Miss Sibley's kissing isn't getting in the way of her work," Mrs. Morrow threatened darkly. "Now if you don't hop to it heating that soup they'll be eating it when the sun goes down."

Hunger, as they say, makes the best sauce, but fine weather makes an equally good garnish. Both were plentiful around the luncheon table that afternoon as the sun put a constant glow behind the marquee's white walls. Mary made no comment about what she'd seen (and heard) between Evelyn and Virginia, though it seemed to be bothering Evelyn to no end – there were several times during the meal when he opened his mouth to say something and then shut it, usually without the pretense of putting any food in it. Mary didn't think he'd eaten half of what was on his plate, and he was still looking remarkably pale. _Is__ he sick?_ She wondered silently, listening to him exchange thoughts with Duff on up and coming commodity markets. He had done his level best not to make eye-contact with her for most of the luncheon, but she had caught his gaze, once, while she was busy studying Virginia again, and he quickly ducked his head away with heat rising in his face. What was he hiding? A little thing like a kiss wouldn't make him as uncomfortable as he now seemed.

"Well, gentleman, shall we return to our sport?" Sir Severus asked, folding up his napkin next to his half-finished trifle and scraping his chair back from the table after the dessert and coffee had been cleared away. "And the ladies, of course," he added, clearly not relishing the thought of having his preserve poached upon by the female sex.

"Duff, you wouldn't mind seeing Lillian gets a good view?" Lady Blake asked from her end of the table, leaving Duff to nod his assent.

"Which leaves Virginia to stand by Evelyn, and Mary to stand by me," Charles announced, before Christabel could impose on him for company.

"Could I have a word with your gamekeeper, Sir Severus?" Virginia asked, as the rest of the party rose from the table to collect their furs and gloves and walk out to the next stand.

Their host looked absolutely mystified as to why a young female guest would wish to speak to the gamekeeper, but Sir Arthur beat him to it. "Don't tell us you're a hunter as well, Miss Sibley! Should we have Masterman set out another peg for you?"

"I don't think the rest of us could stand to be in the presence of such accomplishment," Mary remarked sarcastically. Virginia glanced at Mary with a contemptuous expression before turning her gaze to Sir Arthur, for whom she had a much more forgiving look.

"We hunt at Gracefields all the time, but sadly, Sir Arthur, I cannot hit the broad side of a barn, despite all of my cousins' best efforts. I am, however, now a first rate loader."

"You're going to load for Mr. Napier?" Sir Severus didn't seem to believe what he was hearing.

"Oh, let her go on, Severus. It adds a bit of drama!" Colonel Towser said with a smile. "Remember the memsahibs at Mafeking? I'm sure Miss Sibley will perform just as admirably."

Their host looked, for several moments, like a volcano about to erupt. "Oh, all right," he decided finally, cheeks flushed with the exertion of accommodating such a change. "Masterman!" Sir Severus strode off to have a word with the head keeper, presumably to dismiss one of the loaders for the day, since Evelyn hadn't brought his own. _What is her game?_ Mary wondered bitterly, following everyone out of the tent to collect walking sticks and seats and the yipping pack of retrievers, keyed up at the thought of more sport. But Virginia herself offered no more explanation than to stay close to Evelyn, one arm twined through his while the other carried one of his Purdeys, properly broken open.

As a general rule, Mary disliked shooting – between the dogs, the beaters yelling, and the constant sound of gunfire, the only thing that really came out of a shoot was a headache. Her father had friends who suffered migraines from the amount of shooting they'd done – but those were old men, whose sole occupation for entire months of the year was to go out with a dog and a gun.

Charles had drawn an outside peg, further down the line, probably intentionally, to leave the lucrative spots in the middle to his uncle's friends. But it gave Mary an excellent vantage point over the rest of the shooters – Duff, more interested in cracking jokes with Lillian than actually hitting anything, Sir Arthur and Colonel Towser each tracking birds with single-minded purpose, Carroll limping through the motions like an unpracticed schoolboy and getting fed up with his loader when he wasn't hitting anything, arguing about a fouled gun or the wrong cartridges while his sister suffered on behind him, arms crossed yet again in boredom.

Mary looked over from Charles' peg and saw that Evelyn, on the far end of the line near the other stop, was moving in slow, determined motion. Virginia was close at his shoulder, whispering in his ear as if she were coaching him on his shots – he would put the gun to his shoulder, but the barrel never seemed to kick. He'd track a bird, pause, and then hand the gun back to Virginia, who gave him the other one in return, breaking open the barrel of the first to load it again. But something was wrong with her hands, somehow, something Mary couldn't really place.

The beaters' whistles, the sound of the guns, the tapping and rattling of the beaters in the brush all came to Mary in a sudden, vivid tableau of sound, and she suddenly knew why Evelyn had been so white, and why he would not fire. Matthew had spoken of it, once or twice, when he wasn't convinced Mary was really listening. This was it. The sound of battle.

And it had driven Evelyn to distress.

When the gamekeeper Mr. Masterson had called a stop to the drive, and everyone broke their guns to head to the next, Mary wandered over to Evelyn's peg, nudging the ground where he'd been standing with the toe of her shoe.

Not a single cartridge – Evelyn hadn't fired his gun once.

That was why Virginia had wanted to come. Another loader would talk, tell the others that his gun hadn't managed to hit anything or, worse still, didn't seem to want to fire. But Virginia could keep his secret for him. He'd suffered through the morning's drives on pure determined nerve, but that was frayed to threads, and Virginia, seeing him at lunch, had known it at a glance. So she would pantomime with him, and no one, in the clouds of smoke and sound, would be any the wiser that Mr. Napier hadn't once discharged his Purdeys that afternoon. As for having no birds in the bag, well, he could easily say he'd missed, or that he was out of practice, and everyone would shrug and say 'Sorry, old boy' and the world would go on, as it always did.

But there would be other shoots. There were always other shoots.

* * *

The dinner table was alive that evening on reminiscences of those 'other shoots' – Sandringham, for those who were lucky enough to have attended the late King Edward, but Molland, Chargot, and Nettleby made appearances as well. Mary didn't care about where Gilbert Hartlip had retired in Nairobi, or whether the unusual cold was going to be bad for the birds next year, and she was never so thankful as when Lady Blake advised the ladies of their adjournment to the drawing room.

Lady Blake had heard Virginia's comment, that afternoon, about hunting at her country house (if indeed it was a proper country house at all) outside of Chicago, and now was pressing her for details of the Chicago social calendar and all its vagaries.

"Chicago society doesn't think much of a country weekend, at least not the way the English do them," Virginia was saying, "We have the Hunt around, every so often, and the Chicago Golf Club's very close, but there's not much to do, otherwise, to tempt guests out. When I entertain, it's usually a dinner at my apartment in the city, with a bit of dancing afterwards, or a trip to the theater."

"Do you go out, for dancing?" Lillian wanted to know, falling in step with her mother as they exited the dining room. She could be silent as a mouse during dinner, but she had questions of her own that were better served by the more personal preserve of the drawing room afterwards, where no one could censure her for speaking out of turn.

"Sometimes," Virginia said, smiling encouragingly at the teenager. "But a lot of the jazz clubs, the really good ones, anyway, are a bit of a drive. And my friends are not the kind of people who turn up their nose at rolling back the carpets and just putting on the gramophone."

"And this is _society_ where she's from," Christabel remarked with a sniff to Mary.

Virginia, thankfully, hadn't heard. "Actually, when - when Evelyn asked me to come, I thought I'd better bring something, as a thank-you gift. He said something about Charles' invitation including young people, so I brought a few new records for your gramophone. All fairly new, you won't have heard some of them."

But Lillian was enthralled. "Can we do that tonight, Mama? Carew can bring down mine, and it wouldn't be too much work to move the chairs. It would be such fun! We don't usually have anyone who can dance! And it's Charles' last night home," she added, playing her last ace with desperation.

Her mother looked ready to disagree, but the ace seemed to work. "Oh, all right. Carew! Please have Timothy bring down Miss Lillian's gramophone and put it in - no, not the library," Lady Blake seemed to be doing a mental tally of the amount of furniture in each room, and the relative value of the art, should the dancing get a little too wild.

"May I suggest the South Drawing Room, madam?" Carew said, obviously having done the same mental calculations himself.

"Yes, that's probably better - we can open the door to the veranda if it gets too warm."

"Very good, madam."

They milled around in the hall while the footmen attended to the drawing room and Virginia disappeared upstairs in pursuit of her unorthodox gift, coming back downstairs, not with just one or two records, but a sizable case which she presented, with a pleased flourish, for Lillian to open.

The seventeen year old sat down on the stairs and read the labels on the heavy shellac with evident relish, anticipating a new adventure in every recording. "Paul Whiteman, King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band, Isham Jones - what names!"

"I tried to get bands I'd heard before, and newer songs. Selection in London wasn't quite what we have in Chicago, so it's a quite limited – Dipper Mouth Blues, that's a good one. King Oliver usually plays Lincoln Gardens when he's in Chicago."

"Have you really heard all of them play?"Lillian looked up from her treasure trove with still limitless marvel.

"Not all, but most. If I'm traveling I like to ask around and see who's performing. Gives me names to pass on to our variety section. It's a new idea I'm trying out – we listen to all the records out on the market and tell you who's playing in town and what new talent the recording companies have picked up and that sort of thing. Like a motion picture review. It's not caught on just yet, but it's for younger readers who maybe wouldn't pick up a newspaper otherwise."

Lillian nodded and returned to her horde, turning the 78s over with the tenderness of an archeologist excavating a new dig site.

"Have we missed something?" Duff asked, as the gentlemen emerged from the dining room to find the ladies away from their usual post. "Are we having our after-dinner cocktails on the veranda by moonlight?"

"Lillian wondered if we might have a bit of dancing tonight. Since it's Charles' last night home for a while," Lady Blake said, playing her daughter's ace again, this time against the frown developing on her husband's brow. "Carew and the others are clearing the south drawing room for us."

"Oh, splendid! What've you got there, Lillian, or shan't you share with the rest of the class?" Duff asked, sitting down on the steps next to the teenager and getting his own look at the records.

"A gift, from Miss Sibley," Lillian explained. "New records!"

"Now I really will have to invite you to Threadneedle Street, Miss Sibley, if this is the kind of thanks your hosts get," Duff promised with what could only be termed a rakish grin. Virginia wisely ignored him.

"The drawing room is ready now, Madam," Carew said, reappearing in the hall.

They'd made short work of moving the furniture towards the walls – probably helped by at least one housemaid, the two footmen wouldn't have been able to get everything out of the way that quickly. Lillian's gramophone gleamed on one of the side tables, with a footman next to it to continue cranking as the evening went on. The elder Blake girl scampered over with her treasure-chest and sat down on the nearest couch to make the evening's first musical selection.

"We'll have a game of cards, Carew, I think," Sir Severus said, eyeing the empty drawing room with distrust and making a beeline for the table in the corner that had retained its chairs. The butler nodded and went for both the cards and the grog tray, which his master had not asked for but which his expression indicated he might soon need.

"Here, put this one on," Lillian said, balancing the box precariously on her knees for a moment while she struggled to get the record out of its sleeve.

There were a few premptory crackles as the needle settled into its groove, and suddenly Paul Whiteman's Bamablina filled the room like a breath of spring air as the needle bobbed over the shiny surface of the wax. Lillian's face filled with indescribable joy, and even Virginia couldn't help smiling at her.

"Come on and dance, Lillian, it's just a foxtrot."

"I don't think I –"

"I'll teach you if you don't know how, it's very easy," Virginia said, setting the box of 78s aside and pulling her off the settee. "Here, take my hand, like this, and we'll wait for the beat. Annnnd… step back, back, and to the side. Back, back, and to the side. There you are! Don't think about it too much, just listen to the music. Back, back and to the side. You'll have all the boys wild for you in no time. Back, back, and out!" She did a little flourish to the side and Lillian, concentrating on the steps she already knew, did half of her side step and then fumbled into what Virginia was doing. "Good!"

They performed a few more turns before the others deemed it safe to join them on the floor, still giving the two women a wide berth. "Mind if I cut in?" Charles asked, taking his cousin's hand from Virginia's with the wide smile of a protective older brother trying to shore up his sister's faith in herself.

"I'll step on your toes," Lillian predicted.

"Not if I step on yours first," Charles said with a ready smile.

"Then I'll take that, if you don't mind," Duff said, cutting in to sweep Virginia into a very enthusiastic version of the dance she'd been taking in baby steps with Lillian. Mary tried to catch Evelyn's eye, but he looked like he very much wanted not to be caught, hurriedly asking Lady Blake if she'd care to take a turn, which she accepted graciously as her husband watched censoriously from the corner behind his card game.

The song ended, too quickly for Lillian, and she rushed to have Timothy the footman replace the needle and start the record again so she could practice a second time, her steps much surer this time alongside Charles. Duff rushed to cut her off on her way to the gramophone for the third time, and stopped to replace the Whiteman record with one that he'd selected before offering his hand to Lillian.

Mary watched from the couch, her foot tapping idly as she tried not to feel too neglected as Christabel intercepted Charles on his way over to her and pulled him into this latest foxtrot.

But suddenly there was a kind of break in the music and a male vocalist started crooning,

_Everybody hand-in-hand, swinging down the lane,  
Everybody feeling grand, swinging down the lane,  
That's the time I miss the bliss, that we might have known,  
Nights like this, when I'm all alone! _

Mary suddenly felt very cold.

_When the moon is on the rise, honey, I'm so blue,  
Watching lovers making eyes, like we used to do,  
When the moon is on the wane, still I'm waiting all in vain,  
Should be swinging down the lane with you! _

The dance struck back into the instrumental, and Mary ducked outside, not trusting herself not to have a flushed face or a wet eye. _Should be swinging down the lane with you_ was hitting her heart where it did not need to be bruised. Not here, and not now.

But someone was already outside – Virginia, too, had found the drawing room a little too stuffy with all the dancing, and was taking a breather out on the veranda, calmly inspecting the night sky. Mary hadn't really taken notice that Duff had lost his first partner – she'd been too busy watching Charles and Lillian laugh as they stepped on each others' toes.

"I forget about what the stars look like, when I'm in the city," the American said fondly. "Too much light to see them properly there."

Watching her there, serene as a still lake in her beaded gown, suddenly made Mary very angry. How dare she stand there without a care in the world, queen of all she surveyed? How dare she be happy and content when all of Mary's world seemed to be leaving her? "I wouldn't know. I'm not often in London."

Virginia, surprised by the sudden defensive tone, turned away from the railing.

"Was there something you wanted to talk to me about, Lady Mary?" she asked, fixing Mary with another one of the calm, challenging stares Mary was coming to know so well.

"I saw what you did for Evelyn today, at the second drive."

"Oh?" Virginia was trying for nonchalance, but Mary wasn't going to play games with her any longer. Everyone else was occupied with the gramophone, and she knew a good opening when she saw one – this might be the last spare moment she had with the American, without Evelyn to defend her.

"How noble of you - you must get such a thrill being able to add him to your charity cases. A tragically wounded British officer – your readers must love the drama." The orchestra wheedled on in the background, completely forgotten.

Evidently she'd pushed the right button. Virginia's eyes blazed. "Evelyn is no charity case. If you think that you're colder than I gave you credit for. And I'm not so cheap that I'd use a man's suffering for a story."

"So you just happened to meet him in Paris, and he just happens to benefit from your skills as a nurse. How perfect for you and how very lucky for Evelyn."

"I didn't know a thing about his condition when we met in Paris. In fact, I wouldn't have known at all if a car hadn't backfired in the street during one of our lunches. One minute he was sitting having the most normal conversation and the next he was hunched over my shoulder hiding from a barrage that wasn't there."

"And you sat and spread your cloak of sympathy around him?"

"No. I sat quietly and held his hand until he'd recovered himself," Virginia clarified. "And after he'd had his moment, do you know what he said? 'Thank God I don't have to explain myself to you.'"

The words brought Mary up cold, remembering so many soldiers at Downton, ashamed of being seen without their bandages hiding the worst of their scars or burns, ashamed to be found at night whimpering in their beds. They'd hated to accept help from her, who wore no uniform, but they'd sit by and talk to Sybil in her nurse's cap, because Sybil knew what they had been through, sympathized, and understood without a lot of awkward questions. _Thank God I don't have to explain myself to you._ What had Evelyn seen, that he should say that? What had Virginia seen? Battle, presumably, as a nurse, and probably hundreds of shell-shock patients. Virginia knew without asking, as Sybil had. Virginia needed no excuses – she'd taken him as he was and said nothing.

Mary reminded herself of the matter at hand. That wasn't part of the plan. There were other ears for Evelyn's troubles, and they weren't going to marry him. "You're not doing him any favors, covering for him like that. There'll be other shoots. It's part of who he is – part of who _we_ are."

"And your people don't change, is that it?"

"We don't change just for change's sake."

Virginia looked at her a moment and took a long, cooling breath, trying to recover herself. "Did he never tell you why he didn't go back to the Foreign Office, when everyone said he was such a success there before the war?" she asked, face resolute. "Did you never wonder why he decided he'd apply to the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries instead?"

Mary didn't answer – she _hadn't_ wondered, now that Virginia mentioned it. The thought had never even occurred to her that she should wonder. The change had been a little odd, now that she considered it, but – but who was she to argue with Evelyn's choices? Hundreds of men had been coming back and changing their lives about a little bit, in those years.

"Stress," Virginia pronounced sharply from inside Mary's silence. "His doctor told him he wouldn't be able to do it. Saving this happy realm, this England, day after day, from inside a little office with no view of the real fight but what others tell you, unable to move forward. Too much like a trench. The stress of the job would have strangled him."

It would have been easier to say 'killed him' but after four years of fighting the words had lost a little of their gleam. Strangled, though – that still had a sinister air of the unknown about it. Mary felt her skin fledge with goosebumps again, but she did not move. The women remained where they were, two duelists facing each other down in the dim evening air, neither one giving an inch of ground. _Is this why they started digging trenches_, Mary wondered idly, not wanting to take her eyes off of Virginia. _Sheer determination not to give up ground_? "I know you don't like me, Lady Mary, but that's no reason why we can't be civil to each other," the American suggested, turning away from Mary's gaze and drumming her fingers along the stone of the railing. She looked back at Mary, waiting for an answer.

"Don't like you? Whatever gave you that idea?" Mary asked with a superior tone.

The American snorted. "Whatever _doesn't_ give me that idea?" she retorted, dropping her hand and taking a few steps towards Mary, closing a little of the gap between them. "You've thought from the moment you met me that I was some title-hunting tart who's after Evelyn for his house and his social cachet."

Now the gloves were coming off. Mary could see a little of the polite resolve that had kept Virginia so well through Friday's dinner wearing away piece by piece. Just as well - she'd wear her down and make her say something no amount of polite banter could take back. "Well, I'm not sure I would have used the word _tart_, but if the shoe fits…"

"Nothing could be further from the truth. I don't care about any of that – the title, or the estate, or –"

In the midst of her floundering, Mary pounced. "So you don't care about Evelyn, then, because I can assure you all of that matters a great deal to him."

Virginia opened her mouth as if she meant to shout, glanced quickly at the open door to the drawing room, and let out a long, low hiss of breath, fuming. "You are – you are so good at twisting words to make them mean what you want them to mean, Lady Mary. You look at me and all you see is a rival, and believe what you will about me and my motives, but I'm already on your side. We have more in common than you think."

"Really," Mary replied, unimpressed and unmoved. "How do you find that?"

"We're both women who know what we want, and who go out and get it. You play a longer game than I do, but you're English, it's in your nature. We have a strong sense of our family, our duties, our traditions, our commitments, and we keep them. We both want what's best for Evelyn. And we are prepared to go to whatever end to achieve it."

"And you think you're what's best."

Virginia let out another sigh and smiled desperately. Some of the determined set was gone from her shoulders, and she seemed weaker now, frailer. "I'll be honest with you – I don't know if I'm the best." Her voice, too, was softer, and her candor took Mary by surprise. But she went on. "He – has more good in him than anyone I've ever met, and I don't know that I deserve that. He's kind, he's generous to a fault, he laughs easily, and whenever he speaks, you know instinctively he means what he says. The war destroyed too many men like that, and I don't think I deserve the last one. He needs someone who loves him just as deeply as he loves her. But I don't need to explain myself to _him_, either – he takes me as I am."

"And you'd…give that up, if you thought he were better off with someone else." Mary's skepticism was apparent.

"Sometimes we must make decisions we don't like, Lady Mary, for the greater good." Virginia let her gaze drop, tapped the balustrade nervously a few times, and took a deep breath. "We didn't meet…just the one time, in France. It wasn't wise, but nothing about war is wise. You meet a man once and his face gets lost in a sea of faces, meet him twice and remember him vaguely, meet him three times and… wonder what you've done to give him such hope of living. You pray that you don't see him a fourth or fifth time, because by then it's gotten harder and harder to let him go back to the front. I let it get to seven." She had the look of a woman making a confession of the worst kind of sins, the kind that have weighed on her for a long time. _Let her find enough rope,_ Mary found herself thinking, _and she'll hang herself._

"I didn't mean for it to - I'd come all that way to be a nurse, not fall in love. But he wasn't like any man who'd ever been interested in me before. He didn't…diminish me. And…he made me forget…" she struggled for a word that wasn't there, shook her head, and continued. "The last time, he had a three-day pass, so we met for dinner, and then we were having such a nice time he missed his train, so I took him to my cousin's flat, where I was staying. It started pouring on the way home, and we were soaking wet, and…" she trailed off again, knowing, instinctively, that nice people don't speak of what she was trying to say.

But Mary had a pretty good idea. "Dear me."

Some of the fight flared back into the American's eyes. "You've never been in a war, Mary," Virginia rebuked sharply. "Perhaps it feels like it some days, but when it comes down to it, you have no idea what it's like, to spend days on end in mud that feels like ice, becoming a pair of arms to fetch and carry, forgetting what it's like to touch another person and not come away covered in blood." The younger woman's eyes were wild, and the night air around her seemed to crackle in the silence. "We did what two perfectly sane people who wanted to feel human again would do." Saying this, some of the anger in her face fell away, her eyes softening a bit. "Afterwards we talked, just talked and remembered, about home, and the people there, and he talked about you. Lady Mary Crawley. A woman of such charm, such beauty, a woman well-reputed. How you had gotten away from him and he wished you all the good things in the world in spite of it." She pronounced the qualities so lightly, so suspiciously, as to make them burn in Mary's ears. "And the way he spoke about you, the way his eyes lit up to say your name – I don't think I loved him then, but I wished for his sake he could have had you, if only to make him as happy as he seemed then."

There could be no witty reply to that. In the middle of a war, in the middle of an affair with another woman, he had been thinking of her. True North. Perseus to the end.

"After that night, I let him go back to the front, and tried to forget, to convince myself he'd be better off with a girl at home like you." She spat it out with venom and stepped back, letting Mary take it as she would.

Mary couldn't argue with that, or refute it, without making herself into an unfeeling monster who ate men's hearts, just for the selfish fun of it. And she couldn't argue with Virginia's candor about giving him up.

All the cool calm of the argument had left her. Her heart was pounding, as though she'd run a great distance instead of merely standing still, and she took a moment to steady her breathing. Her pulse roared at her temples for a moment like a wind out of heaven, and she clutched the railing, steadying herself. When it had finished, all other thoughts had washed out except the simple inclination to breathe. Slowly, the stars and the night sky settled back into focus.

He had wanted her, and she had not gone to him. It was that simple. She'd gone to Matthew. That had been her decision, and now, five years later, he was making his.

Speaking at a party, once, about old school things, Edith had said something to someone, about Mary's dolls and how she kept them in boxes as a child and wouldn't let anyone else play with them. _'She was afraid someone else would break them, you see. No matter how gentle we were with anything of hers she was always afraid we'd break it.' _

She was afraid now that this was the same thing. It had thrilled her, as a child, to see them all lined up in their boxes, and be able to say that these were hers, and hers alone. It was the having that made them sweeter, not the use. But these were not dolls, but men. She couldn't _keep_ all the soldiers in the box – that is not what toy soldiers are made for. They are made to be played with, to have their battles out and lose the shiny paint of youth and finally fall apart with life's use. And she didn't need all of them. She only needed one, and it wasn't the one Virginia wanted.

The silence seemed to reconcile them, a little bit, allowing the floodwaters to recede.

Her voice cracked to speak again. "He's very dear to me, Evelyn." It didn't cover the half of it. "I don't…think about him, that way, anymore. More like a brother, or a…a close friend. And I don't want to see him hurt. You understand that?"

"Nothing could be further from my mind."

"He sets a lot by marriage, you know. It wouldn't be separate bedrooms and scheduled midnight visits."

"His parents were like that. Yes, I know," Virginia said, responding to Mary's surprised glance. "A man shares a lot of things when he thinks his world's about to end. I told him I felt the same way. About love and marriage."

"Good." Mary seemed a little lost for words.

"I know you English don't like to talk about money, but the plain truth is that I am fortunate enough to be in a position that affords me the luxury to marry how I choose. I intend to use that fortune to good effect."

_I believe a marriage should be based on love_…Mary smiled a little, in spite of herself. "He'll be lucky to have you." The words did not sting as she thought they might, though Virginia's surprise made her prickle a bit. "I mean it."

"Thank you. That means a great deal, coming from you."

"So, does this make us friends, now, or something equally cozy?" Mary said, trying to regain a little of her ice-queen composure.

"Let us use… allies, instead, and consider the matter closed." Virginia turned to make her way back to the drawing room.

"Miss Sibley!" Mary caught her on her second step. "My late husband was in the war. There were places in his memories he wouldn't let me go – grant that I know that much. He hated to shoot, too."

Virginia found a scrap of smile. "You might remember that, a bit more."

Evelyn met her at the door, his heads bent towards hers in quiet, agitated conversation, his eyes darting outside to the darkness. But Virginia wouldn't oblige him, only shaking her head and taking his hand for the next dance. Even from out her Mary could hear the pop and crackle of a well-played record, obviously one of Lillian's collection taking a spin on the Victrola.

_Every morn' my memories stray  
Across the sea where flying fishes play.  
And as the night is falling  
I find that I'm recalling  
That blissful all-enthralling day…_

"You're missing the fun out here, you know," Charles said, coming to join her out on the veranda.

"Charles, do you think I'm really ridiculous?" Mary asked suddenly, turning to face him. The desperation in her own face seemed to echo back with the surprise in Charles' expression.

"What's brought this on? Was it something Miss Sibley said, just now? She did look like she'd been through a hurricane when she came back in."

Mary tried to think of a way to summarize the argument succinctly, stumbled for a few moments, and settled for a very brief explanation, the briefest explanation she could find. "She thinks I'm too protective of the things I love."

He considered this a moment, trying to determine what it was she wanted him to say. "That's probably true," he allowed, "But you are not now, and I cannot believe you have ever in your life been, ridiculous for it."

"Not even when you first met me?"

"A careful, calculating snob, perhaps," Charles allowed, "But that does not make you ridiculous." He studied her a minute more, but Mary gave him no further clues to her distress. "I thought I might drive you to the port, tomorrow, after everyone else has caught their trains."

Mary nodded, mutely. It was probably better that he had changed the subject – she wasn't even sure she wanted to talk about this with him.

"Shall I…leave you out here, for a bit?"

"I wouldn't mind being alone, just now."

"All right. I'll tell Carew you're out here, so you don't get locked out."

Mary nodded again, and Charles went back inside, leaving the door open behind him. The music beckoned, and Mary turned towards the party inside, watching through one of the windows as her fellow guests laughed and joked and danced along with their host.

She'd made a point of coming this weekend to gather her facts and her thoughts, and now that it came to it, everything was more jumbled than ever. The whole business of Virginia and Evelyn had distracted her, far more than it should have, and she had not taken the time she should have to seriously consider Charles and his suit. But she did know things, now, that she hadn't known before, about Charles and his family and his life here.

What was bothering her was quite simple, really, and yet complex in its own way. She had always thought of herself as a part in the larger mechanical working of society, thought that someone should want her because she would bring things into thier marriage, power and prestige and land and a good name, all variable bits of the clockwork that would make a rise to the top of the towers of the aristocracy quicker and smoother. That was the way she had been raised, the way in which her world worked. That someone should want her, not as Lady Mary Crawley of Downton Abbey in Yorkshire, eldest daughter of the Earl of Grantham, but as just Mary, almost beggared belief.

Almost.

Matthew had wanted her when she was just Mary. But she had been too young, and too proud, and too long in the marriage market to see Matthew as merely Matthew, the first time he'd asked her, Matthew the man who laughed with her over dinner, who danced with her, who always rushed in where other angels feared to tread. All she had seen, all she had been told to see, was that he would, or would not, have Downton. Laughter would cease, dancing diminish and heroics fade, but Downton, she was told, would be the only thing that remained secure.

Could she think of Charles the same way? But Charles had been different. Charles wanted her to come to love him as just Charles, and have the rest afterwards be - what had Lady Blake said? Unexpected delight. Could she love just Charles, if all of this disappeared tomorrow, as fortunes sometimes did?

Her mind wandered back to the kitchen at Downton - scrubbed table, a single plate, fork, and knife each, eating the only meal she could prepare by herself, the humble scrambled egg. But he had smiled with her, laughed with her, and, perhaps most importantly, he hadn't said a word about how beneath his dignity it was to eat what amounted to a nursery room meal in the kitchen. He had sat and eaten. Not all the men in her life would have done so.

She would have been secure without Downton - she knew that now. She would have lived a quieter life as the wife of a Manchester solicitor, and she was convinced, now, that she would have been happy had she thrown away the advice of others. If all this disappeared, Charles would still be Charles and all the things that made her smile when she was around him would remain with him. He wasn't tied to it, as her father was tied to Downton, didn't derive his lifeblood, the essence of his being, from the estate. Charles could go on – and probably happily, too – if Lady Blake suddenly had another child, if Clonfinard burned down overnight, if some long-lost cousin from overseas appeared. Mary would be a great heiress, and her children great heirs, or … she would not.

She had learned something, too, about the nature of women in the world. However much she had disdained Virginia's open talk of business, she had found herself thinking of Downton in the same terms. Once, perhaps, she would have needed to marry so that her husband would have the running of the estate. But she was managing quite well, with Tom's help, just as Virginia managed the paper with help from her cousins. Virginia would marry because she was in love, not for the good of her publishing empire. Downton did not _need_ a manager – but there were other needs to consider. First and greatest among them – that George would need a father.

Among Robert and Cora's generation it was uncommon to lose a spouse early, whether to illness or, god forbid, divorce; Mary could not think of more than two or three families where one or another of the parents was gone permanently. She could, however, think of a great many families unlike her own where mother and father had separate bedrooms, separate houses, even, dividing two people who had married for expedience or money or any of a dozen other reasons. She wanted many things for her son, but one thing she knew he must have was a man who loved him as Matthew ought to have loved him.

She watched Charles, still wheeling around the room with Lillian, laughing over the music at something she'd just said. Did she want _this_ father for him?

The scene before her yielded no answers, and the darkness behind her offered no solace, and the music in the drawing room continued crooning on into the night,

_I found my love in Avalon  
Beside the bay.  
I left my love in Avalon  
And I sailed away.  
I dream of her in Avalon  
From dusk till dawn.  
So I think I'll travel on  
To Avalon._


	4. Act 3: Sunday

_So, the explanatory author's note at the end of this chapter has convinced me that I probably should have written an essay rather than a fanfic. _

_But that would have been very boring and then __**none **__of you would be reading it, and that would make me really sad. _

_So here it goes._

* * *

_Act 3, Scene 1: Sunday_

Sunday promised to be a late, lazy morning - some slight mention had been made last night of church, but no one was going, preferring instead to stay abed dreaming in Dixieland rhythm. It had been very late indeed when the gramophone finally played its last song of the evening and everyone stumbled off to bed. The ranks had thinned, as Sir Severus and Lady Blake, as well as most of the other older guests, had gone to bed long before the small hours of the morning.

There was always little in the way of entertainments on Sunday, barring the time-honored tradition of wishing all the other guests well as they left to catch trains and begin their motor tours home. Mary preferred to avoid all of that, choosing instead to watch the leave-taking from the relative safety of her window, in the company of a small book of poetry which she was only intermittently flipping through.

She had promised herself that this weekend would be a quiet one, and she had been wrong. Instead of finding quiet she had nothing but unanswered questions in her mind, questions that were quickly opening up all the gates of self-doubt that only months of mourning Matthew had been able to close.

Her mind was in twelve different places today, in the Downton household account ledgers and the stock books and the pile of letters from the solicitor's office overseeing George's inheritance. It was in London, and it was on a training speeding towards Yorkshire, and it was here, too, at Clonfinard, all movement and no silence. It was as if her mind, knowing all issues to be equal, wanted to work on all of them and none of them all at once. And all that left her with was a constant feeling of unease, that she should be sitting doing nothing when so much needed to be done.

She took another deep breath and tried to return to the book of poetry. She'd picked it up because it was different than the others—a newer binding, but with the spine well-broken and the pages well thumbed, having long since lost the new- frayed edge left by the book knife. Several of the poems had turned down corners and words happily underlined in soft pencil, while the text behind went on with its gravely-edge voice.

_The trees are in their autumn beauty, the woodland paths are dry... _

The image struck Mary as the walk out to the folly Friday evening flashed before her, and she turned to the frontspiece. Was this some local poet, writing here? Yeats. The name seemed familiar. Oh, yes, that fellow, the political poet with the seat in the newly formed Irish Parliament, the one who had won the Nobel prize. It seemed strange that his poetry should be here, in this house where Nationalism was a dirty word, and be so well loved. Mary turned the frontspage over. Incised into the front papers in direct, black ink was a name - _**C. Blake**_. So this was Charles' book. That explained a great deal. He must have placed it here himself. A purchase made to spite his uncle, perhaps? But he enjoyed it, too - the penciling was proof of that.

A small slip of paper fluttered to the floor as Mary closed the book. _Mary,_ the little tag said, her name deeply underlined. Too late - she'd lost the page that had held it. She slipped it back inside at a random interval and set the book aside. It probably didn't mean anything, probably was just a reminder Charles had made himself to put the book in her room. She wasn't going to take the time to riddle it out – she wasn't one for poetry, and besides, it was probably safe to head downstairs now, anyway. Most of the guests had gone. It would give Anna a chance to pack up her things, and perhaps a walk would help her clear her head.

But she had miscounted – there were still packing cases in the front hall as she came down. Their owner, resplendent in a peacock-colored car coat, turned to watch Mary's descent down the stairs and smiled benignly from under the rim of her cloche.

"Lady Mary," Virginia Sibley greeted her from beside the pile of trunks with the air of an – an ally, Mary reminded herself. "I was hoping I'd get a chance to see you before we leave."

Mary didn't have time to respond – the other player in this little drama seemed to know his cues too well, coming into the room just as Mary was opening her mouth to reply.

"Virginia, the car's just -" Evelyn stopped and looked a little paralyzed for a moment, his eyes darting between the two women, no doubt picturing Clytemnestra and Cassandra sizing each other up at the quay at Mycenae. It had been the first time he'd seen them in the same space since their fight the other night, a fight which he'd only heard Virginia's side of. There was a fear in his eyes that Mary had never seen before – not his usual unease, when two people who didn't like each other were forced into the same room, but genuine fear. _She's told him I know about his nerves,_ Mary realized. _He's afraid of __**me**__._

His fear diminished her. She'd wanted to make up some lost ground from last night, take back a little of the moral high ground from Virginia, but she found now she couldn't do it. Suddenly there was a vast chasm between her and Evelyn, a chasm she couldn't cross. Last night, as Virginia had spoken of _not explaining_, it had made sense in the abstract, but now, now it was real. And in order to speak of it, he would have to explain. And he couldn't. At least not here.

She managed a weak smile in Evelyn's direction, hoping she didn't look too pitying, but it was Virginia who actually spoke.

"It's all right, Evelyn, you won't have to break up a cat fight. I think Lady Mary and I have both said our piece and will part as friends," Virginia said evenly, smiling at Mary. "I'll meet you outside in a moment." Thus dismissed, Evelyn left, still looking over his shoulder suspiciously, as if he expected them to commence battle as soon as he was out of earshot.

The American turned to Mary with a level gaze. "I wasn't lying just there, was I? We will part as friends." It was halfway between question and statement.

"I wouldn't like to have you as my enemy, Miss Sibley," Mary said fairly, meaning every word. "Where are you off to next?" she asked, her glance darting out the door to Evelyn, waiting next to the car that would take them to the port.

"Back to England, first; I've business in London I need to finish up, and then he's promised to take me to Branksome Hall, to meet his father. Nothing like that," she added with a smile, acknowledging Mary's look of surprise. "I'd put it off, if it had been. It's just to put a name with a face, while we give it a few months and see where it goes. Then I'm afraid it's back to Chicago for me. If I'm away much longer Bertie jokes they'll give away my office, and I can't have that."

"His father's very much into racing," Mary suggested, by way of friendly intelligence on a mutual acquaintance. "It's all he ever talks about."

"I've been told if I stick to the Onwentsia polo season and the hunt club I should be safe. Truth be told, if I can get through a weekend of Sir Arthur's big game hunting stories the races should seem like a cakewalk. But thank you. Are you leaving soon yourself?"

"Charles is going to drive me to the port, later. I'm catching the night steamer back to Liverpool."

Virginia nodded took a step in the direction of the door and then turned, reconsidering something. "Lady Mary, I hope you will allow a friend to share a bit of observational intelligence, about Charles."

"By all means."

"I don't know if you've noticed, but when you walk into a room, he has this expression on his face like he's been trapped in darkness and the sun's just come up."

Mary'd never noticed such a thing, but she wasn't in a mood to argue. "I'm told that's common to men in love, Miss Sibley."

"Yes, but the other half of it is that when you hear his voice, you almost do the same thing," Virginia related with a satisfied grin, watching as the jaded expression dropped out of Mary's face in surprise. "Except when you're getting ready to disagree with him," she added with relish.

"And then I frown, I suppose."

No," Virginia said with a chuckle. "Then your smile gets wider for a moment, like you're looking forward to the challenge." She gave a confidential smile, and then, considering a bit further, ventured, "Evelyn told me all about - about your Matthew."

She didn't know why his name should make her feel so vulnerable, so unprotected. Perhaps it had suited her to have Virginia know her only as a woman Evelyn had loved, not as a woman who had loved another.

"He sounds like he was a very wonderful man," the American said simply.

"He was. Wonderful." Why should the words be so difficult, and her tongue thick in saying them?

"You might just think about _why_ on your steamer home." She lingered a moment on Mary's surprise, and then, after a moment of consideration, presented her hand, as she might for a business acquaintance. The gesture set Mary back a little, but she took the handshake nonetheless. Virginia's grip was firm, the kind of handshake that men of industry like. _I'll watch out for Evelyn,_ the handshake promised. _I'm on your side._

And instinctively, Mary trusted it.

She walked Virginia out to the front of the house, where Evelyn stood next to the car, waiting nervously.

Virginia turned back to Mary as she neared the car door. "May I say again it has been a pleasure finally meeting you, Lady Mary. You are welcome in Chicago any time you'd like to get away."

"I think it unlikely, but you are kind to offer," Mary replied, her eyes flitting over to Evelyn. Her childhood friend had relaxed a little bit, and his face bore the unmistakable signs of relief. Perhaps when he'd had time to think about it, they'd talk more. Perhaps. "Best of luck with your business in London," she added, though she wasn't sure why.

"Best of luck with your business here," Virginia said, eyes flashing with mischief. "Remember what I said about _why_."

And then she and Evelyn were packed into the car and trundling down the driveway, Evelyn no doubt worrying her over what she had meant by 'what she said about why'. Mary smiled unconsciously and headed back into the house.

It would be another hour yet before Anna was done packing her things, and besides, the steamer was scheduled for later that afternoon anyway. The garden beckoned through the open sitting room door, green and gold and inviting the sort of clarity of vision that Yeats' poem had promised. _The trees are in their autumn beauty, the woodland paths are dry…_

Mary disappeared through the door without a second thought.

The hedgerows left a lot of time for second thoughts on other subjects, though. Why had Matthew been wonderful? It was a question she'd been ruminating over and under and around for the whole weekend. But it defied an answer. He had simply been _Matthew_, a whole jumble of thoughts and ideas that after ten years had all lent themselves to wonderfulness. He had disagreed with her, argued with her, lied for her. He was the keeper of all her secrets. Why should a…a different smile for Charles pass by all that?

Mary settled into a seat under the rose arbor, now devoid of roses, and surveyed the garden.

"I hate Sundays." The sudden announcement made Mary look around fruitlessly for a few moments before Hilda emerged from another hedgerow and threw herself on a bit of stone wall across the path. She scuffled the ground underneath her perch with the tip of her shoe, and Mary relaxed a bit. She didn't think she wanted to speak to anyone, just now, but the energetic twelve-year old wouldn't offer any over-tiresome conversation. "Everyone leaves and the house is quiet and nothing interesting happens." She drew a sort of wave in the gravel and then scuffed it out again with her heel. "_Is_ everyone gone?"

"I think so."

"Charles didn't have to drive Christabel home, did he? She wouldn't stop asking him at breakfast."

"I think he got out of it," Mary guessed, remembering seeing Christabel and her trunks next to one of the house cars.

"Good." Hilda's voice was very resolute. "I don't like Christabel," she announced. "She's loud and snobby and she never listens to anything I say."

Mary silently agreed with Hilda's assessment of the Honourable Miss FitzGerald, but said nothing.

"She wants to marry Charles, you know," the younger girl said off-handedly. "Because of the money. I wish she wouldn't. Charles doesn't like her." Her face was decided and stony. "I don't think she listens to him, either." Her face then suddenly brightened, and she looked up at Mary. "But he likes you! He should marry you. Mama said you've already got a son and Papa is always going on about how Charles needs one. He could have your son! Or you could make another one," she added hastily, seeing Mary's distressed surprise. "And then you both could come and live here, and Charles wouldn't be in London all the time. It's always more interesting when he's home."

"Do you miss him, when he's in London?" Mary asked, lightly side stepping around the issue of the marriage question, which she wasn't quite sure she wanted to deal with at the present moment, and the idea, so blithely suggested by Hilda, of making babies with Charles, which she was quite sure she didn't want to touch at all.

"Lots," Hilda admitted, her wildly active mind successfully touched off in another direction. "He's always got such fun stories to tell, from when he was at school and when he was in the Navy and now with his work. He tells us all about all the houses he gets to visit. He told us all about yours!"

"All about Downton?" Mary shouldn't have been surprised - hadn't Lady Blake already told her that?

"Yes, it all sounds so lovely! With the cypress trees from the Lebanon and... and the lavender along the lime walk and the...the Temple of Diana, with the little carvings in it the Earl made when he was a child!"

As Hilda said these things Mary could see them, in her mind's eye, as clear as if they were actually here before her, but what she couldn't see was Charles seeing them. He'd lived at Downton for weeks, but somehow, it hadn't occurred to her that he would have made time for anything other than Home Farm and the house and his daily visits to the surrounding estates. Yet it seemed he had seen the full compass of Downton, outside of his immediate interests, and with enough presence of mind to describe it - with great detail, it would seem - to his family. When Lady Blake had mentioned him speaking of Downton, Mary had assumed that he had spoken of the Farm, or the village, or of just the people, but it had been far more than that, and fondly remembered, too. No one merely walking the grounds would have taken note of the particular species of tree he was walking under, nor casually seen the childish etching her father, as a boy of ten, had incised into an out-of-the-way corner of the stone out at the folly.

In the silence, Hilda had realized something, and her face had fallen again. "I don't suppose you'll want to leave, and come here."

"Clonfinard is very lovely, too," Mary assured her. "But it's not...easy to leave your home. I need to take care of Downton for my son, and my father. Just like Charles needs to take care of Clonfinard, for your father."

Hilda nodded. "Sometimes I wish we didn't have a big house like Clonfinard. It makes life so awfully complicated."

_Now, isn't that the truth,_ Mary sympathized silently.

"So that's where you are!" The shout had come from a little indistinct figure making his way up the garden from the direction of Model Farm, long coat flapping against his muddy Wellingtons. Mary frowned at the forwardness of the shoddy figure - it looked to be one of the pig-keepers, or perhaps even one of Charles' farm managers.

But as the figure drew closer, he materialized into Charles himself, the very picture of unkempt country life, his boots crusted with a morning's worth of mud and his ulster - clearly a favorite for these early morning expeditions - showing a lot of strain at the shoulders and several very artistic mud patterns along the hem.

"You gave Miss Simms quite the slip at breakfast this morning - she was all over the house when I left wondering where you'd gone. She'll have the police out for you if you don't make some kind of appearance."

Hilda's face fell with the implications. "But she's said we're to go for a walk today."

"You love walks," Charles countered, with some confusion.

"Not with Miss Simms. She'll make me do multiplication tables while we walk. Can you come with? She only makes me do it to fill the time."

"I've got to drive Lady Mary to Belfast to catch her boat," Charles reminded her. "But I'll be back in time for dinner."

This seemed to cheer Hilda, but not by much - it took another encouraging smile to urge her up the steps to the house. Charles took a step closer to Mary and waved his cousin on again, and there was a sudden change - Hilda took another look at the parting scene, suddenly broke out into a broad smile, and scampered up the steps in quicktime to disappear into the house. Charles looked at Mary for some kind of explanation, and, finding none, shrugged.

"I was down at Model Farm to see the pigs," he said, answering Mary's unasked question about his curious attire.

"On a Sunday morning?"

"Good excuse as any to miss everyone packing up," he offered. "Has Christabel left?"

_Do you think she knows how much this house despises her?_ Mary wondered. "She and Carroll were the first to go." That was true - Mary now remembered looking out the window at the now-familiar figure of the Honorable Miss FitzGerald waiting impatiently in the drive in her resplendent fox-fur stole as her brother shook hands with their hosts and conveyed thanks and best wishes and promises to reciprocate the favor that would almost certainly be forgotten by the time they reached Kenwick Hall.

"Thank God. I hate the last day of a house party - you have to confront everyone you've successfully avoided for the whole weekend."

The contrast between Charles' sentiments and those of his younger cousin almost made Mary laugh. "Hilda doesn't seem to like her very much," she observed, just to see what Charles would say.

"Hilda and I are in agreement on that." Charles looked down at his boots and gave a short laugh. "Goodness, I do look a mess, don't I? I suppose I'd better change before driving you to the port," he realized, smiling apologetically.

Mary almost found herself saying that it really didn't matter, that she wouldn't have minded being seen at the port with him whatever he wore. She drew the thought up short in stunned surprise at her own casual mood. _If only he had that smile with him, too, _another part of her mind added. She shoved that thought aside as well and focused on following Charles back to the house.

Temporarily lost in the simple pleasure of a fine morning in fine company, Mary realized that she didn't quite know where Charles was leading her. The uniform pea-gravel of the garden path had given way to mismatched stone chips and stacks of grocer's crates. They were at the back of the kitchens.

Charles looked around and his smile apologized again. "My shoes are at the kitchen door. I usually go down the servants' stairs in the mornings, and my boots are out of the way back here - Aunt Julia doesn't like mud on the carpets."

Mary could only nod sagely, keeping her silence as Charles changed at the back door, leaving his boots in a tray set aside for the purpose and hanging his stained ulster and cap on a hook above. He looked utterly at home, sitting on one of the chairs in the hall to change his shoes – Mary couldn't even picture what the back door at Downton looked like. Oblivious to his companion's unease, Charles finished tying his oxfords and disappeared down the passage, Mary following in close pursuit, unsure where they would go next, her unease echoed by the glances of the hallboys and maids in the downstairs passage. Charles, of course, they knew, but Mary was an unknown – would she treat their preserve as the young master did?

"Good morning, all!" He said cheerily, sticking his head inside the next room they passed. A loud clamor of pots, pans and running water informed Mary, even before the smell of soup pushed past the doorway, that this was the kitchen.

"Oh, good morning, Master Charles. How's my bacon looking this morning?"

"Very fine, Mrs. Morrow, very fine indeed, but you won't see him for another month. And you won't see him at all if you can't promise me the first cut on my breakfast tray. I'm told Hilly got the last piece when you were supposed to be saving it for me, and I'm not sure I've forgiven you yet."

"Why, Master Charles, you young scamp, I would never," said the old cook, smiling with that curious mixture of benevolence and surprise that old women take on when a young person of whom they are very fond is clearly joking with them. She clearly saw a lot of him downstairs, and was perfectly content to do so. "Now, will you stay for somethin' to eat? I've some shortcakes put by for the tea this afterno-" But in the middle of this pronouncement she had suddenly seen Mary, hovering behind Charles like a high-born ghost, her silk blouse and smartly shined shoes standing out in strong contrast to the tiled walls and cotton shirtwaists of the kitchen maids around her. "Oh, I…I didn't know you had a guest with you. I'm terribly sorry I didn't see you, my lady. Please don't let me keep you."The jolly matron dispensing sweets had faded out, replaced by the upright front room manner that all cooks hold in reserve for when they were called out of their kitchen preserve to venture 'upstairs.' Young Master might want to stay for cakes, as schoolboys were known to do, but Master Charles, the grown man with a female companion in tow, would not have time for kitchen pleasantries with old childhood friends.

Mary had a sudden stab of regret that Mrs. Morrow had seen her - watching the older woman converse easily with Charles had been like standing in a sudden shaft of sunshine on a cold day, enlivening and restorative beyond belief. Now the cold had descended again, and Mary followed Charles up the servant's staircase and back upstairs.

He did change for the drive back to the Port of Belfast, though he allowed Barnard to take them in one of the large house cars instead of driving himself. Anna sat up front with the chauffeur while Charles and Mary were left alone in the backseat, slowly gravitating towards each other on the leather bench until their knees were touching. It was not uncomfortable, or awkward, just two people sharing the same small space, and Mary found herself, not happy, for happy was too wide a word, but content.

They remained that way until the smoothly rolling country roads gave way to the tumbling cobblestones of Belfast, and the road, for reasons of its own, jumbled them farther apart seeking refuge with the leather traveling handles near the doors.

The chauffeur made himself scarce once the car was parked outside of the port. Waiting for Barnard to come back with a porter to come back with a trolley, the three of them found themselves waiting patiently - silently - in front of the Port Authority.

Charles glanced around, at the trunks, at the side of the building, and finally, between Anna and Mary. "Anna, I wonder if you might...give us a moment alone." His eyes must have done the right kind of begging, for Anna nodded, and went off in search of a suitably long distraction, leaving her employer alone.

"Yes?" Mary asked, not knowing whether to be hopeful or afraid of what might come next. Charles cast around for a moment, the comfortable silence of the car replaced by this anxious tension between them that Mary didn't like, full of unasked questions, a great many of which she didn't think she wanted to hear.

"What were you and Hilda talking about, before I came up, this morning? You looked a little frightened."

Mary let out a little bit of breath. That, at least, was safe to answer – mostly. "She was telling me how much she doesn't like Christabel," Mary said truthfully. But that wasn't the whole truth, and somehow, strangely, she felt Charles needed the whole truth. "She…she wondered if we'd get married, instead."

The truth seemed to deflate Charles a little bit. "I suppose that's put you off," he assumed, sounding very let down.

"Your aunt already asked about our prospects yesterday morning," Mary admitted, trying not to add any insult to the injury.

Charles rolled his eyes and sighed heavily. "God save me from my interfering relatives."

Hoping it would help, Mary added, "I didn't really give her an answer."

"Will you give me one?" Charles hung back, his face hopeful.

Mary cast around, looking for the right words. She didn't want to refuse him, but she didn't want to outright accept him, either. What to say that hadn't already been said? "You've given me...such a reputation, Charles! I can hardly live up to it."

"And what has that got to do with anything?" He had called her bluff, and quickly, too. That wasn't the real reason for her refusal, at least not all of the reasons, but she'd put weight in it now.

"You've promised your family some kind of domestic goddess, and I'm not that. Your aunt, and Hilda, and Lillian, they all expect me to be this rosy-cheeked remembrance you've made up."

"Have I? I had no idea. What have they said?"

"Oh, your aunt thinks I'm strong-willed and stubborn enough to put up with you and Hilda thinks I'm a wonderful mother and between one reputation and the next I'm not sure where the real Mary Crawley starts and the reputed one begins. Virginia's heard about me from Evelyn and she thinks... I don't know what. Even you – " She was babbling, and she didn't know why. Was this more of her reason than she'd thought?

Charles cut in. "Do you know why I invited you?" She shook her head, not trusting herself to speak. "I thought that since you knew about it you might as well know... all of it." He gestured hopelessly to an expansive, invisible house, the ghost of Clonfinard that lurked behind his words. "I don't want it, but there it is. You had an expectation of me, and I wanted…I don't know what I wanted, really, but I wanted to give it some substance, so that we'd… have all our cards on the table."

Mary nodded, a little lost for words. What was one to say to something like that?_ I wanted to win you on my own_, he had said, as if it were cheating to play all his cards, even if he had the best hand of all her suitors, honestly dealt.

And then another memory surfaced, of a cold winter evening spent searching for a lost dog, lingering behind the others for a moment of privacy. _And does he despise you?_ _Please tell me._ And she had told Matthew her terrible, terrible secret, laid all her cards out on the table for him to see and play them as he would, and she – she remembered looking at Matthew the same way that Charles was looking at her now, begging, pleading for an answer, any answer, that would make the waiting worth it.

_Don't joke. Don't make it little, not when I'm trying to understand._ That was what she was trying to do now. Virginia's question from this morning tumbled back to her – _He sounds like he was a wonderful man. You might just think about why_ – and added itself to this terrible mix of thoughts. Her indecision seemed to be showing on her face, for Charles' expression had softened, and some of his fear had been replaced by – boldness? Determination? But he could do that – his cards were not as terrible as hers had been.

"Shall I tell you what _I_ expect? Of you?" Charles asked kindly. "Nothing. I've no right to any expectations of you, nor has anyone else. Besides, I know you'd defy them anyway." He glanced at her, and, seeing she was still paused in thought, smiled. "Shall I tell you who I wish you'd be, just for me?" he asked, softly. "That woman who scrambled eggs at four in the morning with mud in her hair."

"Oh, Charles, don't say that," Mary begged, feeling her heart tug. _For I am a being of this earth, and no star._

"I liked her - I liked her awfully. She wasn't trying to be anyone else." His eyes had fallen to the pavement, and then flew back up to glance at Mary, his hands working nervously at the brim of his hat. When his words finally emerged, they were simple and precise.

"Is there any hope?"

He didn't need to ask more than that. It was one simple question in place of a thousand other larger ones, the one question that distilled them all down. Has all of this been in vain? Have you at least decided against me? Should I keep waiting for another chance?

There was so much more she knew about him, now that she'd seen him at home among his family. She had seen Lillian's dance lessons, and Hilda's simple logic regarding marriage, and Lady Blake's pronouncements about his stubbornness and suitability. Little things, too, like Mrs. Morrow in the kitchen practically dancing in humble adoration of the young master, and the strains in his jacket from work in his barns. She longed for his at-homeness in all of it, the ease he maintained with the people who loved him. _He takes me as I am_, Virginia had said, explaining why she loved Evelyn. _He doesn't diminish me._ There was no pretense between them, no pretending. That, she remembered, was why Matthew had been wonderful – she did not have to pretend with him. When they had both stopped pretending they had realized they loved each other, and not before. He took her as she was, pride and vanity and past mistakes and all, and he did not despise her for it. He never could despise her, she remembered him saying.

Charles didn't want the woman of sterling reputation and grand family and great privilege. He had played all his cards, though he hadn't liked to. He had wanted the whole truth between them, if there was to be anything at all. _She wasn't trying to be anyone else, _he had said. Charles didn't want her to pretend, either.

And, she realized, she wanted that, too.

"Yes," Mary said decidedly, though as she said the words they had a practiced sound, as though her mind had been made up for a long while. "There is a great deal of hope."

Simply saying brought a feeling of great relief and sudden calm, the kind of calm she had not felt since that night so many years ago when the man she had loved had picked her up and spun her around in the snow, and the world felt _right_ in so many ways. It would not be tomorrow, or a month from tomorrow, but it would _be_.

And looking at Charles, she realized Virginia had been right – he did have a smile, just for her, as though the sun were coming out.

* * *

_Unwearied still, lover by lover,  
They paddle in the cold,  
Companionable streams or climb the air;  
Their hearts have not grown old;  
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,  
Attend upon them still. _

_-The Wild Swans at Coole, W.B. Yeats._

Charles did mark a poem in The Wild Swans of Coole (1919) for Mary to read – it was Her Praise, which begins,

_SHE is foremost of those that I would hear praised.  
I have gone about the house, gone up and down  
As a man does who has published a new book  
Or a young girl dressed out in her new gown,  
And though I have turned the talk by hook or crook  
Until her praise should be the uppermost theme…_

This story started with something very similar to the thoughts expressed in Her Praise - I am ashamed to say that when I started writing this story I had one objective in mind, to let you all meet Virginia, 'until her praise should be the uppermost theme.'

Unfortunately, in trying to make that story work I had to introduce another, secondary story, which was to make Mary understand that (in my mind, anyway) Charles is the fellow who's going to make her happy. Like Shakespeare's Portia, who inspired the title of the story, Mary comes from a distinguished lineage but participates little in the life of the house, a keen mind that remains under-utilized. "Think you I am no stronger than my sex, being so fathered and so husbanded?" Portia begs of Brutus when he won't tell her why he's so out of sorts. Much of Season 4 is about Mary gathering her strength and then, as her father second-guesses her, asking the same questions of Robert. Eventually, he realizes his error, and Mary is allowed to have that public life that her mind is so suited for. It is Mary's mind that I love, and it is her sharpness and quick wit that I think need the most consideration when it comes to her suitors.

Throughout Season 4, any time Mary needs company or companionship, she turns to Gillingham, but any time she needs _advice, _most often about that public life,it's Charles to whom she turns. Gillingham falls in love with Mary after merely seeing her again after many years, loving Mary on the basis of who she used to be – Charles, meanwhile, comes to love her as the woman she is now, a woman who farms pigs and takes charge of her own affairs. (It's for this reason, also, that Evelyn realizes he and Mary will never work out – I have this idea that he's in love with a memory of Mary, not with Mary herself. Realizing this, he goes to Paris, by sheer happenstance meets Virginia, another woman from his past, and realizes that he, and the world, have changed, and Virginia is prepared to meet that change in a way that Mary, and many other women of his acquaintance, aren't.)

I'd like to think I succeeded at my first story and only partially and incompletely touched the second. I tried to make as many parallels between the two couples as possible – the search for acceptance, shared experience, longing and return, the role that reputation plays in relationships and how sometimes we pretend to be people that we really aren't just to please others – to knit the story together and make it feel like a more solid mass, but it still feels flimsy in parts, for which I apologize. Evelyn and Mary still need to have a talk about his condition, about why he felt he couldn't confide in her and why he's so taken with Virginia, and Charles and Evelyn, I think, still need to have a talk, preferably in the safe confines of the smoking room, about why the women they love draw men in.

But these are problems for another time. For now, we can only sit back and wait for Season Five.


End file.
